


Who Would I Be?

by bakers_impala221



Series: Who Would I Be [1]
Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Alternate Canon, Alternate Timelines, Angst, Assassin Mary, BBC Sherlock - Freeform, Canon Compliant, Canon Related, Canon Universe, Death, Death Fic, Depression, Drugs, Guns, Johnlock - Freeform, M/M, Major Depression, Major character death - Freeform, Overdose, Post-Canon, Sad Ending, Sherlock - Freeform, Sherlock Holmes - Freeform, Shooting, Soulmates, Suicidal Thoughts, Suicide, Tragedy, Unresolved Sexual Tension, alternate season 4, drugs and suicide, major trigger warning, mary and john - Freeform, no TST, season 4, season 4 fix-it-fic, trigger warning
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-15
Updated: 2018-12-08
Packaged: 2019-03-05 06:37:03
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 15
Words: 22,186
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13382238
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bakers_impala221/pseuds/bakers_impala221
Summary: "What would you do if I died today?""I'd die tomorrow."John Watson is dead. Without him, Sherlock is made to endure the agony of a world without his conductor of light.How would that change him as a person?If every Holmes must have his Watson, who, exactly, would he be without him?





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Just to clarify, this does have a major trigger warning, so if you're sensitive to suicide/suicidical thoughts, drug use or depression, and are likely to relapse, please don't read this story.
> 
> If not, and you are able to read it: thank you and I hope you enjoy.  
> Thank you to anyone who reads, comments and leaves kudos

  The cold metal of the needle poked at his arm, and though he vaguely registered that it was stinging slightly, he barely felt it. The numbness of his entire body prevented most physical sensations from declaring themselves to his vacant mind. 

  He focused on the injection in his hand and suddenly the air in the room seemed to drop to subzero and his heart began to speed up in anticipation. 

  Thoughts flashed in his mind, those _pictures._ Of _him_. 

 _Why must I be reminded of you_ ** _, constantly?_**  

  He leaned forward and rested his forehead on the cold pavement of the abandoned factory, relishing the cold that bit into his skin ferociously, clinging onto any sort of _feeling_ other than this _despair._  

  It hurt, and it hurt _so much_. 

  He could feel his hands trembling uncontrollably, turning blue and numb from the cold and disuse. The needle dropped from his grasp and was sent clattering to the concrete floor with a sharp clang that rang and echoed through his desolation and despair. 

  He closed his eyes and the world around him was replaced by soothing blackness. The fleeting sensation of relief flooded his mind as he enjoyed the temporary ignorance to the darkness around him, before it faded away and turned to bright colours; pictures flashing in front of his closed eyelids; memories of long-forgotten happiness and hope and peace. 

  And of _him_. 

  He could feel his mind conjuring words, the ones that he had not spoken, nor thought, nor dreamed of for so long. The firewall of his mind pushed against the oncoming invaders, but he could feel his defence weakening by the second. The strength in him was dripping away like sand in an hour glass, counting down the seconds until those words –that _name_ \- came back to him and the agony would again flood his mind. And there was nothing left for him to do but wait. Wait for that onslaught of anguish to come to him and drive him insane; to push him off the edge he’d been balancing on since the day it happened –the day everything began; the last day he’d lived before this hell had descended upon him. 

  And suddenly, the internal struggle ended and the words forced their way into his mind. 

   _John Watson._  

   Sherlock cried out suddenly, and the sound echoed through the walls of the old, empty building, ringing through his ears as his heart, his mind and his eyes bled out through reopened wounds, staining his blackened soul red. 

  For a few minutes –or perhaps hours, he wasn’t sure- he lay on the hard, cold floor and trembled as he cried. Tear streaks ran down his face and stained it red, his green eyes were shut tightly against the unforgiving cold of the hopeless darkness. 

  And then he opened them slowly and blinked against the dark, flicking his eyes to the needle that still lay, abandoned, where he had dropped it, and he reached out a shaking arm towards it, grasping the freezing metal with trembling fingers and pulling it towards him. 

  Then he sat up slowly and positioned the needle so that it was poking back into his arm. 

“ _John Watson . . .”_  he whispered to the shadows, to where no soul could hear him. 

  Then he let the needle penetrate the skin of him arm and injected the liquid into his system; his oblivion. 

  And when he dropped to the floor, consciousness slowly leaking out of him, he knew that any pain this would cause was well-deserved, that maybe somehow, it could make up for he did; for what he didn’t do –that it would somehow compensate for everything. 

  And as he slowly fell into nothingness and his mind went blissfully blank, and oblivion gradually took over, he murmured softly into the desolation surrounding him. 

    ‘ _I’m sorry._ ’ 

He deserved this. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, just to clarify, also. I am not in any way trying to romanticise suicide. Suicide is serious and no one should ever die because someone else does. They wouldn't want that.
> 
> The only reason why I have written this the way I have, is because I think that in BBC Sherlock, Sherlock and John are soulmates who literally cannot be without each other. So, this is fiction; please never do what Sherlock does in this fic <3
> 
> Just... stay alive


	2. Chapter 2

 Coldness had conquered Sherlock’s life after the death of John Watson. 

  He barely felt anything, and the numbness overtook him to the point of agony. 

  He desperately longed for the ability to _feel_ again, to feel _something –anything,_ but the space of the gaping hole in his life manufactured by John’s death was irreplaceable by anything or anyone but John himself. 

  John was everything that kept him going. 

  Sherlock often spent days in his living room, in the empty flat, lonely and in a blank state of depression, wandering around his mind palace, exploring the memories that he had of John. His mind was fixed in a constant state of buzzing and emptiness. His life felt trapped, like the strings of his violin, long since abandoned, left vibrating softly, whining out their last moments in a melancholic hum of lost desperation and hope. 

  For days, nothing changed. Lestrade didn’t bother phoning or barging into the flat with the urgent request of help of some mundane case Sherlock might have otherwise longed for after such a long, tedious break. The only visitor he got was Mrs. Hudson, who came up to his floor a few times a day to monitor his food intake and activity, and Sherlock wouldn’t so much as open his eyes to acknowledge her appearance. Especially since, every visit and check-in, Sherlock could just _sense_  the pitying looks she gave him as she delivered and took away the practically untouched food to and from his abandoned desk. And he couldn’t look, because he knew that he wouldn’t be able to stand _seeing_ it for real, that he couldn’t take the sudden overwhelming realisation that other people were mourning too; that he was really, truly _gone_. 

  The only times he could ever bring himself to spare her his acknowledgement was every few days when she’d come up to force him to eat _something_ , in which he would begrudgingly comply, if only for her sake –and for John’s (as able as he may be to reprimand.) 

  Constant surveillance on Mycroft’s behalf did not come as a surprise to Sherlock, and it was taken for granted that Sherlock closed the doors –sometimes literally- on every camera he found hidden away in a corner of the flat. Mycroft seemed to not have grasped the concept of mourning in peace, alone and undisturbed by the feeling of being constantly _watched_. 

  But Sherlock knew, really, why he was under persistent scrutiny. Mycroft thought he _knew_  the signs. 

  

  Sometimes, Sherlock would scour the flat for something of John’s to remind him of his smell, his _being_ , that he had existed at some point, and hadn’t just been a figment of Sherlock’s imagination to keep him company for a high. 

  Occasionally, Sherlock would even entertain the possibility that perhaps he was high right now, or in some dream-state of a coma, and that maybe John was here with him, by his side in a hospital bed, begging him to keep holding on, to keep holding on for _him._  

  But he knew it wasn’t true. 

  Realism was always a strong point for Sherlock. And as much as he hated it for its role in the prevention of Sherlock’s ability to confess his love for John properly, the way he had always meant to, he was almost thankful for it. He couldn’t, for a moment, forget that he was gone. He couldn’t imagine what that would that would do to him. 

  

  

  Six days after John Watson’s death, Sherlock had been on his bed, his eyes tired and burning slightly, and his face tear-stained, red and slightly swollen. A piece of paper rested in his hand, fluttering in the wind coming through his opened window, a felt tip pen balancing in his right hand, and his fingers holding it lightly as he composed himself. 

  Looking out the window to the starry night, he wrote his first message. 

_You were the bravest and kindest and wisest human being I have ever had the good fortune of knowing._  

  

  

  Three days after the death of John Watson, Sherlock Holmes found himself at Lestrade’s flat. He walked in, wordless and quiet, and Lestrade took one look at him and understood. He didn’t say a word, didn’t wait impatiently for Sherlock’s initiation, didn’t bother to ask how he was, just wordlessly offered him a beer and sat next to him with one of his own, and a face of barely-concealed pain and concern. Sherlock hated the pity, but he knew that he’d been on the edge –further than before, if that were even possible- and was near breaking point and needed to _move,_  to go _somewhere_. 

  He’d thought about going to Molly’s, but Molly would probably burst out crying at his appearance and wouldn’t keep respectfully quiet the way he’d known Lestrade would be. Also, he felt that if anything was going to help ease his pain a bit, if not getting high, it would be a hard alcohol –something he knew Lestrade would be in adequate supply of, especially in a time like this. 

  So the two sat there, in front of the telly, neither of them paying any attention to what was happening, just drowning themselves in alcohol; drowning away their unspoken pain. 

  

  When Sherlock finally stood up, Greg watched him fumble for the door, before finally breaking the silence and getting up to follow him to lead the light-weight back to the sofa, with a half-amused, ‘that’s it mate,’ lightly coated with a forgotten lingering sadness that clung to the air Sherlock occupied, constantly. 

  When Sherlock was safely asleep on Greg’s couch, the officer walked to his own bedroom for rest, leaving the younger man in what he hoped was a peaceful, alcohol-induced sleep. 

  

  

_(Three days later)_  

  Sherlock looked at the papers surrounding him on his bed, small white notes, confessions and pleadings. He picked one up with delicacy. 

 He looked down at the neat, black writing. 

_John Watson. Come home._  

 

 

  Four days after John Watson’s last breath, Sherlock Holmes was exhaling white puffs of smoke into the cold room. Smoking was never approved of by John –or anyone for that matter- but now he was gone there was no one to stop him. No one who he cared enough about right now, to stop _for_. 

  He’d promised himself one thing, and one thing only. Don’t get high. For John.  

  Only for John, would he ever make such a commitment. Because only John ever mattered, he was the only person Sherlock cared about. 

  So he lay on his sofa in his suffocating flat and smoked, exhaling puffs of white, wispy smoke, in the desperate hope that it would take with it his suffering as it floated into the air still cold with the irrevocable loss that clung to the flat and followed Sherlock everywhere he went. 

  It was only when Mrs. Hudson came up the stairs to reprimand in a more miserable than disappointed tone, and to open the windows, did Sherlock put out the flame to his makeshift allayer. 

  Once she’d given up on making him eat, Mrs. Hudson left the floor and Sherlock resumed his passive brooding, as he watched the smoke drift slowly out of the flat into the cold night, fading into the darkness. 

  Moonlight shone through the window, sending a streak of white light to John’s chair, still in its old position by the mantelpiece above the empty fireplace. Only a tiny trace of fire was still left in it, and it had only been lit once, in a clouded moment of anger and despair, since the cold winters where they’d sit by the fire, warm and cosy, and _happy_ and _content_  and _together_. 

  Sherlock had been tempted to light it, just to burn his things. 

_I’ll burn you. I will_ ** _burn_**   _the_ ** _heart_**   _out of you._  

  And now there was nothing left but ashes. 

  Sherlock watched the dust dance in the white moonlight, and finally, after days of deprivation, he let his eyes wander to the worn, red chair splayed with soft, white light. 

  And there, sitting in it, he saw John Watson, smiling at Sherlock’s chair as though he were sitting in it, in a time when the world was still okay; when the world was good, and Sherlock would think in his special position as John admired him from his rightful place, by his side. 

  Nothing would ever be okay again. 

  And then the moonlight started to disappear and John began to fade away. 

    “No!” Sherlock exclaimed, as he moved to sit up from the sofa in a pointless attempt at re-summoning his hallucination with proximity. 

  Then John appeared again, this time standing by his own chair, older than the previous version –the day he had died- and he was so much sadder now. This time he was standing facing towards Sherlock, a look of utmost sadness spread across his face, as if he knew what was about to come. 

    “Sherlock,” he said. 

  Sherlock looked up at him, his eyes watery and stinging slightly as he gazed at the man in front of him. 

  He wasn’t sure what to say, what he was _meant_ to say, so he spoke the truth. 

    “I need to see you again; I need you here with me.” 

  John looked conflicted, his face a mixture of determination and affliction. 

    “Sherlock… I _am_  dead.” 

  Then suddenly, Sherlock could feel a part of him rebel against it, as he said desperately, defiantly, “No. No, you can’t be. You have to come back. I can’t do this without you.” 

  For a moment, there was a pause and the air seemed to still, and the rays of moonlight shone back into the room, and for a second Sherlock almost thought there was hope that he’d come back; come back to him. But then tears began to form in John’s eyes and the moon once again hid behind the dark grey clouds, leaving the room cold and dark once again, as he whispered, 

    “You have to.” 

    “I can’t.” 

  John broke, and Sherlock felt the remaining pieces of his heart shatter again, the shards cutting the inside of his chest, making him bleed out internally, all over again. 

    “Sherlock Holmes,” John said quietly, broken, but determined. “If you die, so many more will, too. There’ll be murderers will never jailed, serial killers never caught. Your death will cause hundreds more.” 

    “ _You’re_ death caused hundreds more,” Sherlock whispered to the floor at John’s feet. 

    “You aren’t dead.” 

  Silence settled for a second before Sherlock asked quietly, “Then what am I?” 

    “Alive.” 

_Alive, alive, alive._  

  Sherlock let out the breath he didn’t realise he was holding, and inhaled deeply before looking up at John, to stare straight into the eyes of his own hallucination. To watch him as he said what he’d been thinking since the night his whole world ended. To watch him break along with him as the truth was revealed to the open; to the quiet empty flat that he used to call home. 

    “No . . . 

    “I am so very far from alive.” 

  Sherlock looked back down at the floor, away from the pain etched onto the face of the man in front of him. He stared at the ground, steeling himself by trying to gather his thoughts and his emotions so that he could put them back deep into his chest where they’d remain hidden forever. 

 Then, when he finally had the courage to look back up at him, the room was dark and cold and empty. 

  And he was gone. 

 


	3. Chapter 3

  On the fifth day of the torturous week following the death of John Watson, Sherlock moved from his position on his sofa with a new objective in mind. 

  Slow, deliberate steps padded lightly onto the wood of the floor in 221B, leading Sherlock to his new determination. 

  He stopped just in front of his abandoned desk to reach out a tentative hand to touch the smooth, wooden surface of his instrument, tracing the outlines of its body, caressing it lightly, savouring each and every memory it evoked. Of that man, that _beautiful_  man, sitting in his seat facing towards the window; to where Sherlock would stand as he’d construct and replicate songs of innocence and purity, light but pensive, reflecting the mood he could only ever feel when in the company of his kindness and morality. 

  He grasped the neck and pulled the violin up to his face, taking the bow from its place on the table and positioning it just above the strings. He stayed there for a moment, closing his eyes and picturing John standing in the room with him, watching him prepare to compose a new piece, or repeat an old one for him, his special audience. 

  The bow lowered onto the string, and he it drew back slightly, listening to and feeling the soft vibrations of the low note whispered softly to the world.  

  He breathed slowly; inhaling and exhaling, constructing sounds in his mind, a low, melancholic tune playing in his head, before reaching a round and pulling the bow back and forth in time to the repeat in his head, the true sound voiced to the room, echoing through the empty flat, low and sad and lost and beautiful. 

  The strings whined delicately under the stress of the bow gliding over it in fluid motions as Sherlock felt his shoulders relax and his arms move smoothly into place over the instrument. He felt something deep inside him awaken as he felt each sound contributing to the piece, feeling the notes hanging in the air around him and grabbing onto them, clinging them to him as he played them into the world as a reflection and outlet of the emotions hidden so deeply within himself. 

  He began to move slightly, unconsciously; his body swaying slightly in time with the music. 

  Then suddenly, he felt his leg rise gracefully as he leaped about a metre into the room. He emptied his mind and swam in a momentary feeling of nothingness, before memories of feeling came back to him of days and nights spent with John. Happiness and comfort, and joy and content. 

  The happy nostalgia lasted a few moments, moments in which Sherlock swam in, forgetting his surroundings as the world around him dissolved. He let go of his mind, his heart, his anguish for long moments, revelling in the feeling of momentary bliss and ignorance. His body felt fluid and flexible as he moved in graceful swirls and the flourishing of his hips and shoulders. Then the song reached its climax and he drew the last note quickly, ending it suddenly, with a sense of finality. 

  He held his posture, breathing heavily as the temporary ecstasy left his body and his mind, and the reality of the world around him flooded back to him. 

  Then suddenly his mind reminded him of the loss –of why he was doing this, emptying his mind with music, and a sudden wave of dread washed over him, as his whole body went rigid for a moment. Then, drawing a deep breath, he exhaled as the violin began to hum an improvised minuet, slow and sad and painful, and Sherlock vaguely registered himself begin to dance again unconsciously, a slow waltz around the living room of his once-lively flat.  

  His movement fluid and graceful, Sherlock would’ve know that, to any spectator, he’d be beautiful to watch, had he not been so absorbed in his own movements; his own mind. Such emotion was drawn from the strings as the bow slid across them slowly and gracefully, that Sherlock was almost swallowed deep into the depths of it. He toed the edge of that cliff with gracefully pirouetting and twirling feet, ignoring just how close he was to falling into that oblivion; how close he was from death. 

  Tiptoeing lightly and swiftly through the fog of memories, eyes closed and unseeing, he breathed deeply in and out, his heartbeat, his breath, arms and his legs all moving in time with the melancholic music. Then suddenly, he broke the fluid synchronisation and lifted one of his feet and pirouetted until he landed and stopped dead for a moment, panting slowly and heavily in an attempt to catch his breath and slow his racing heart. 

   

When his breath was caught and his heart steady, he drew in a long, slow breath before his arms began to move again. This time to a familiar, personal piece. 

  A piece that he’d written long ago, when John still lived, when John had already moved on. A piece for battle; a piece for John. 

   _Waltz For Mary and John_ , he’d written on the top of the page that still lay somewhere, abandoned, in the flat where Mary and John had once lived with their unborn child, who would now never meet her beautiful, amazing father. 

  On the day of the battle, the day he first played it to John, he had sped it up so that it hid the despair that was entangled into the piece’s very core. So that John would never realise just how much it killed Sherlock to watch him fall in love and marry . . . 

   _Someone else_. 

  For a moment, the music faltered just very briefly, until Sherlock righted himself and continued to play. 

  It was the same piece as last time; the same notes; the same order; the same sounds. 

  But this time, he played it slowly, very, very slowly. It chilled the room, piercing it with a sound so deeply emotional, and so utterly _lost_  that it was hard to breathe. 

  And every breath he took felt like swallowing knives, knives that were sent straight to his chest, where they cut into him from within. Every draw of his bow sent a hum of sadness vibrating through the room and through his soul. 

  He could feel his sinuous steps land gracefully, softly onto the ground as he drew the music from his mind; his past, to the unsympathetic world, where no one was watching and no one was listening, to where no one really cared. 

  Then finally he reached the last note, drawing it out long and slow and conclusive until he reached the end of the string of his bow, and the drawn-out note faded away to nothing. 

  He stayed where he was, unmoving, as he savoured the momentary feeling of _nothingness_ ; the absolute absence of feeling through any of his senses. His mind felt blank, his body felt numb and he couldn’t hear a sound. 

  It was like oblivion. 

  It was like death. 

  Then, slowly, he opened his eyes, and everything came rushing back to him; every sensation, and emotion and sound. The tidal wave of feeling overwhelmed him, and he stumbled backward into his old seat; his abandoned chair. 

  Sherlock, squinting, looked upwards in front of him. The light from the carelessly shining sun filtered in through the gap in the curtains that hung in front of the windows, barricading him from the world outside. 

  John Watson was gone –he was dead. He was lost and yet the world kept spinning and the sun kept shining just outside of Sherlock’s cocoon of desolation. 

  People just kept… _living,_ and the world moved on as though the worst thing to have happened hadn’t ever occurred. 

  Like every other soul who’d been marked on the endless list of names of everyone who had ever lived and died, compared to that vast majority of _others_  -people now faded away to nothing but softly lingering echoes of sentimental memory- John Watson never _mattered_. 

  Because in the entirety of the world, what was one more lost soul, but the heartbreak and depression of the remaining, living people, left to mourn his absence, and then to _move on_? 

  Sherlock felt his bottom lip began to quiver as a strange feeling of nausea came over him. And then, as if on cue, John was standing in front of him, an odd mixture of emotions coating his features. 

  His lips were smiling, as if he were happy… but there was a slight frown on his forehead and lines of worry creased the corner of his eyes, which looked so _sad_ , as if he knew what was about to come; what Sherlock was about to confess, what he’d never told the real John, what he’d never said before. To anyone. 

    “That was supposed to be our waltz.” 

  

  

 _(The next day)_  

He observed the vast array of papers spread out on his bed in front of him, around him. 

  Eyeing one of them warily, he picked it up, using his fore-finger and thumb with chary, sliding his thumb on the edge of the paper lightly. 

  It may have hurt, it may not have, but Sherlock couldn’t tell. His mind was distracted, racing with trepidation as he stared anxiously at the small white square in front of him. 

  The rain tapped quickly, harshly, against the window unhidden by the curtain. His heart beat began to quicken, matching time with the patter of raindrops falling against the cold glass, coating them with water; tears dripping down the cold windowpane against a moonless night. 

  His eyes blurred and focused on the words written on the small sheet of white paper, his heart racing as he imaged voicing his proposal, in a time where it would have been heard, considered, perhaps accepted. 

 _Will you dance with me?_  

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Disclaimer: I don't really know anything about dancing. Sorry if the description was off


	4. Chapter 4

  Two days after John Watson died, Sherlock had finally moved out of his room and migrated to his sofa in order to continue his passive brooding. 

  He closed his eyes and tried to distance his mind in an attempt to numb the pain still buzzing through his entire body. 

  To forget the words still running through his mind: 

    ‘ _This world is nothing without the man it just lost.’_  

  Soft steps padded up the stairs to his flat and Sherlock didn’t move so much as to open his eyes. He couldn’t confront the look of sadness on Mrs. Hudson’s face; he wasn’t ready for that veracity just yet –or… undoubtedly _ever._  

  He was so broken without him. 

  

     “Sherlock?” Mrs. Hudson said softly. “Sherlock, you have to eat.” 

  He didn’t say anything. 

    “Sherlock,” she repeated miserably, her tone tired and defeated. 

  Groaning internally, Sherlock sat up and turned to face into the room. Without looking at his company, he glanced at the food and frowned before shuffling towards it and picking up one of the chips with as much grace as he could muster. 

  When Mrs. Hudson was satisfied that Sherlock was eating, she took yesterday’s untouched plate of food and walked out of the living room to the stairs leading down to her own flat. 

  Sherlock stared blankly at the remaining chips on his plate, watching the steam as it rose elegantly from them only to fade away into the cold. The sound of soft footsteps descending the stairs slowly faded from his mind along with it. 

  

   _He’s gone, he’s gone, he’s gone._  

  

  Closed eyelids did nothing to prevent the achingly nostalgic pictures from flashing through Sherlock’s mind. Only for moments did it ward off the memories and leave a peaceful black in his vision. But then the images would come back to haunt him; to remind him again with a hostile forcefulness, of the pain and regret still ringing through his mind. 

   _I can’t get you out of my head._  

  Sherlock stood up from the sofa suddenly, with a huff of frustration. Stepping over the coffee table still adorned with the remains of his chips, he marched over to his cabinets, longing for something to distract himself from the pain. 

  Right up against the filing cabinet, he laid his head against the cool surface before opening one of the drawers and examining its contents. 

  Old case files, books and evidence that had been collected of crimes he’d solved with John. He picked one of his unsolved ones up and examined it. 

Case File: Murder on North Gower Street 

Victim: Sherrinford Hope (01/08/95 – 22/01/17) 

  It had been one of the more interesting cases of his career. 

  Superficially, it had appeared as though the victim had committed suicide and so naturally Scotland Yard had come to their senseless conclusion and almost closed the case. But Sherlock had prevented that from happening with a five minute analysis of the flat and a rapid-fire deduction scene (in which Sherlock had managed to insult the majority of the people in the room –and earned a less-than-happy mood on John’s behalf for a good ten minutes, following). 

   

  He remembered the proud and amazed smile on John’s face when he had recited his (limited) findings of the case. He remembered the way that John’s eyes sparkled; his strong blue irises stared into his own, happiness and pride shining and glittering within them along with the soft, orange light. He remembered how his hair lit up and shone in the sunlight shining through the window, and his slightly rosy nose and cheeks, painted pink by the cold, brisk winter’s breeze they’d just escaped from. 

  He was perfect; he was _his_ ; and he was _alive_. 

  

  Sherlock opened his eyes suddenly. No more remembering. 

_No more remembering._  

  His lifted the arm still holding the case file, from where it had dropped by his side, and looked down at the folder, glaring at it like it had offended him itself and somehow caused this anguish in some way. 

    “Stop it,” he spat, talking to the file. “Don’t make me _remember him_.” 

  He threw the file to the floor violently, and with a rustle of papers and a fairly ungraceful _plonk_ , it landed on the ground. 

  Sherlock breathed heavily, his breaths deep but quick. 

  He glared at the case files, his irritation building up inside him as the memories came back _again and again and again_. He tried closing his eyes, he tried closing his mind, but nothing that he did stopped the pictures of that _face_  coming back to him. Nothing stopped the image of the blood stain that signified his end; nothing remedied the look on his face in his last moments; nothing fixed the pain that had ached inside of Sherlock since the moment he’d been in the line of fire. 

  Because that was the moment he _knew_  everything begun and everything ended. 

  And he’d _watched that_ ; the ending of his life right before his eyes. Witnessing what was, with nothing close to competition, the most painful experience of his life. 

  People came into his flat with stories of heartbreak and confusion; and suffering and loss, Lestrade rang him up to acquire his help with murders and homicides; betrayal and theft, but Sherlock had given up feeling pity and empathy long ago because he found it only hurt, and that pain was only a distraction from what mattered: solving the case. But he’d never been able to help but feel some empathy for the people who came in with their stories; it was occasionally a part of the deduction technique. Additionally, the human nature to commiserate was, at its best, able to be dismissed, and at worst, unpreventable and distracting. But no matter how he’d have tried to understand how it felt, had he cared to know, he couldn’t have _ever imagined_  that losing someone so close to you could ever feel like _this_. 

  Everything hurt. Everything made him feel lost and weak and hopeless. He barely felt anything but the aching that haunted his soul; that would haunt him for an eternity now that he was gone. 

  Nothing would save him now because _he was gone_. 

_How could he leave me!_  

  A wave of fury washed over him suddenly, and his anguish turned to anger and desolation into irritation, because feeling aggrieved beat _grieving_. And it _oh, it was so much easier this way._  

  He grabbed handfuls of files from the cabinet and flung them across the room, sending paper drifting slowly to the ground like snowfall, littering the floor in whites and greys. 

  He stood there, looking at it for a moment, transfixed, before turning back around and throwing more. 

  And then more. 

  And then _more and more and more_. 

  And when the entire draw was empty, he turned to his desk, layered with dust and abandonment, and grabbed up books piled in tall stacks, ripping them up, tearing out pages, and sending the shards of broken memories to the floor. 

  And when the books were all broken, and the files lay spread out across the room like oddly hued snow, he turned to the fireplace, his body still heaving with anger. 

    “Now I’m burning up!” he yelled to the empty fireplace, as though _it_ was now the source of his pain. 

    “I can’t.” He turned to find a lighter, “keep.” 

  He found a match box and lit a match, throwing it into the hearth and watching as the flames grew satisfyingly bigger; hotter; angrier. 

    “G _oing_.” He hissed into the now-hotter air, watching the flames grow with his anger, the light of the fire burning back in the reflection in his eyes. 

   He turned around, back into the centre of the room and observed the paper now lying out before him, the rising temperatures of the room making it seem less like snow, and more like a salt lake, barren and dry and forgotten. 

  Groaning in anger, he bent down and picked up a handful of the files; cases with John; memories of John, and flung them into the fire, watching them burn up into ashes as his fury raged on. 

  He yelled out wordlessly as he made his way to the books stacked on cabinets and shelves and tore them from their place, gathering dust in their piles and odd arrangements. He sent some to the floor behind him and some into the burning fire, exhaling smoke up the chimney and out of the flat burning with the hot rage now replacing the cold desolation. 

  He turned around to his desk and pulled open a draw violently, snatching his old deerstalker and clutching it as he marched back to the fire. 

    ‘ _I’m sick of pretending_ ,’ he hissed into the flames as he threw the hat into their petals and watched for a moment as the fabric caught fire and disappeared slowly into ash. 

  He whirled around to face his desk again, adorned with only the lamp and his and John’s old laptops, and marched over to it, grabbing his computer from the table and lifting it over his head before sending it crashing to the ground, shattering it into little pieces around him. 

  Then he turned to John’s laptop sitting on the table, exactly where John had left it when he’d last come to Baker Street. Sherlock hadn’t dared touch it, had very deliberately left it exactly where it had been when he’d died. Everyone else who had gone near the laptop had been fixed with a cold, deadly stare until they withdrew, and that had seemed to successfully get the message across that it was _staying there_. 

  For a moment, the burning seemed to leave his body, and he felt momentarily transfixed as his arms moved towards the computer, seemingly of their own accord. He touched the smooth, cold metal lightly, inhaling sharply at the contact as the nostalgia returned _intensely._  

  John was behind his eyelids, in his nostrils, in his ears. Everything was John. It smelt like him and felt like him and it was just John. 

   _John, John, John._  

  Sherlock could see him smiling, and laughing and frowning and crying. He could see him standing at St Bart’s where they first met, where his world begun; he could see him lying on the ground as he choked out his last words, and his world ended. He could see John sitting in the cab as they drove to their first crime scene; watched him _accept him;_ the first person ever to do so. He could see John as he stood in the middle of the flat and told Mary that she turned out wrong; that she _wasn’t meant to be that way_ ; saw as his world broke as he’d had to remind him that it was because _he chose her_ - 

  Suddenly Sherlock’s eyes flew open in frustration. He noticed that his arms were held above his head, holding onto John’s laptop, posed as though ready to bring it crashing to the ground to meet the fate of his own computer. 

  He imagined it for a moment, the laptop shattered satisfyingly into a million pieces; John’s soul broken, just like his own. 

   _Broken,_ _as_ _his was burning._  

  Sherlock snapped his head up to face the fire still raging on in the hearth in front of him. He took three swift steps forward and was standing in front of the flames, staring straight into them, his heart racing, his arms still held over his head, the laptop balancing precariously above him. 

  Then the world went deadly silent, and everything seemed to halt for a second before his hands opened and the laptop began falling to the ground slowly, as though it and everything else had been put into slow motion. 

  Then everything seemed to speed up and the computer hit the ground within an instant, breaking delicately, hundreds of tiny shards of metal and plastic flying out around him into the far reaches of the room, into the shadows where they’d never be found. Then the temporary deafness seemed to pass and sounds flooded him again, though he remained ignorant to everything around him as he stood in front of the now-calmer fire, staring at the remains of John’s laptop; of what John’s death had done to it, how it had come to the same fate as that of his heart. 

   _Pain_. 

  He turned around very suddenly into the room, muttering frantically. He needed his phone. He _needed_ it. 

  He paced over to his desk and began shifting through all the paper that had piled there, throwing it behind his back as he searched anxiously, sending snowfall behind him, gracefully drifting to the ground. A tiny glint of black metal in the sun caught his eye, and he moved quickly to uncover the rest of the object, revealing two phones lying side-by-side on the desk like coffins of a deceased couple buried abreast, exhumed and disturbed from their eternity of peace together, concealed under the pages of his salt lake and snow. 

  He reached for the phone on the left, the smaller, less-damaged one. Hesitating slightly for a moment before touching it, he felt the smooth surface of the cool metal against his fingertips, tracing the outlines of the cold hard metal, memorising the shape and the way it felt under his fingers. His hand moving to the top of the phone, he resisted the urge to click the on button; to try one more time to turn it on again in some hopeless attempt to bring it back to life. But he knew it would only disappoint him once more. It was dead. It had died the day John had, almost as though it had been connected with John’s soul, and faded along with it as he died. There was no point in attempting to bring them back. 

 He closed his hand around John’s phone, holding the small object tightly in his hand. He shut his eyes and imagined John in the room with him, almost hearing his voice as he spoke soundlessly, but not quite, like listening to the faint echo of a whisper carried on by the wind. He’d not heard that voice for so long, and he wasn’t going to ever hear it again. He needed to hear it. 

  Placing the phone back on the table, he reached for his own one. He ran his finger briefly over the crack that ran down the middle of his phone, and then picked it up slowly. 

  Clicking on the power button, it started to life, flashing against the dimly- lit room until it was on. A warning flashed up as he unlocked it, notifying him of the low battery. He ignored it and closed the tab, opening the calling icon in its replacement. He clicked at the top of the contacts list; John’s name, and let the phone dial automatically. 

  After five rings, a voice spoke from his phone, and for a second, his heart stopped beating. 

_“The number you have dialled-”_  

  Sherlock hung up against the robotic recording angrily with an irritated groan. There was no answering machine, no recording of John’s voice; Sherlock had _nothing_. 

  With a sudden wave of anger, he threw his phone at the wall against the fireplace, yelling at it as though it had betrayed him. Feeling unsatisfied with the outburst, he walked over to the drawer he’d left deliberately untouched, and opened it, finally. Inside was nothing but the one object he currently desired. 

  John’s gun lay in the centre of the dark draw, cold and abandoned with disuse. Sherlock reached into the draw and fingered it lightly before drawing it out to unlock the safety mode. He held it up and aimed it at the wall; the frayed wallpaper still upset from last time. Breathing deeply in, he pulled the trigger and a loud _bang_  rang through the apartment. Then he fired again and again until the gun was empty and his chest felt oddly lighter and heavier at the same time. 

  Standing in the corner of the room, John stood, frowning at Sherlock sadly in disapproval. _Not what I would have wanted_ , he seemed to say without speaking. With a snort of annoyance, Sherlock threw the gun away from him into the dark shadows under the window. 

   _Gone._  

  He looked back up to pointedly glare at the corner, but this time it was empty, besides the mess of papers strewn out across the floor and couch. 

  A sudden sadness and emptiness washed over him, and all the anger withdrew from his body, and the coldness re-established itself into the room and the air, ignoring the fire still crackling in the fireplace beside him. 

  Then he turned away from the bullets newly lodged into the wall painted in yellow spray paint, and to his phone that still lay abandoned on the floor. 

  He dropped slowly to his knees and picked it up in his hand, staring down at the cracks and the broken screen sadly. 

  He knew Mycroft would be able to replace or restore it effortlessly. 

  But something deep inside him told him it wouldn’t be so easily repaired. 

  

  

  He’d once told Irene Adler that her phone was her heart. And he had told her to never let it rule her head. 

  And he now wondered if perhaps that was supposed to be a message to himself, telling himself not to _be this way_. For, was that not what was happening now? His heart was ruling his head; disenabling him to _think_. 

  And almost laughed at the ridiculousness of that thought.  

  Because wasn’t it _obvious?_  

_Of course it was._  

  

    “ _Sentiment,_ ” he whispered to the phone still clutched within his hands. 

    “ _This is what you’ve done,_ ” he accused feebly. 

  Then he raised his hand out to his left and closed his eyes. 

  He could feel the heat of the fire against his fingers still closed around his phone. 

_Burn it,_ a part of his mind whispered in the unmistakeable voice of dread and fear. 

_Burn it, burn it, burn it, burn it, burn it, burn it._  

  And he opened his eyes to the unclear vision of the flames still raging in front of him, blurred and distorted by the tears now gathering in his eyes, stinging them almost painfully, and falling down his cheeks slowly as he blinked again and again. 

  And then suddenly the noise in the room stopped, and the air seemed to almost disappear from the flat, and the oxygen vacated his lungs, leaving them empty and breathless.  

  Moriarty had once told him that he would burn the heart out of him. 

  Sherlock wasn’t entirely sure it was possible at the time, though he slowly began to doubt his uncertainty throughout his time spent with John. But it was only within the last few days where he’d truly begun to understand what it had all been for. 

  And for the first time he _completely_  understood. _That he’d meant John_. 

  And while sentiment was a chemical defect, it was a defect Sherlock had apparently acquired, because _this..._  

_This_  was _undoubtedly... sentiment._  

_This..._  

_..._  

_This was love._  

_..._  

_And oh my god, it_ ** _hurt._**  

 

  The phone buzzed softly in his hand, and he brought it closer to his face to inspect. A warning for the 1% of battery that remained on the screen, lit up against his soft features, reflecting the light in his eyes and his tears. 

  A sudden drowsiness overwhelmed him, and his eyelids shut slowly as his back hit the wooden floor of the flat. And just as the phone gave in to the struggle to keep alight, his eyes closed and his breathing evened out and the light from the screen turned off, leaving the room cold and black and empty again. 

  

  

  Sherlock sat in his chair, refusing to meet the eyes of his new company. 

  Said company took another step towards him, a condescending and superior vibe surrounding his figure. 

    “Due to recent incidences, I regrettably admit that perhaps particular behaviours of late are somewhat understandable, brother dear,” said Mycroft, pointedly glancing around the room before continuing. “However, I must strongly urge you to continue as before Dr Watson inserted himself into your habitual lifestyle, as remaining this way may have dire consequences.” 

  Sherlock barely repressed his scoff. 

    “Who do you need me to replace this time, _brother dear_?” Said Sherlock, a mocking sweetness etched into his voice. 

  Mycroft’s grin was satisfyingly forced in a somewhat distasteful manner as he proceeded, attempting to ignore the fake kindness in his brother’s voice. 

    “No one,” said he. “As a matter of fact, you are relatively _unneeded_ at present, for the… _kind_  services you offer your grateful country,” an awful grin of superiority had replaced the previous one. 

    “Then why,” Sherlock said in exasperation, “have you intruded on the privacy of my flat, _Mycroft_?” 

    “As of late, you have been behaving in an unacceptable fashion, Sherlock. Things are not going to get any better and he is never coming back, embrace it and get on with your life or you will face yourself with more serious issues than that of a certain _deceased_  person,” Mycroft said coldly. 

  Sherlock didn’t deign to reply. 

  This was exactly what he’d been avoiding in the hospital. 

  Mycroft’s unwavering mask was steady as he continued. 

    “Sentiment,” he scoffed, “has ruined you.” 

  Sherlock didn’t bother to argue; it was quite true, so instead he remained silent as though completely unaware of Mycroft’s mere existence. 

  An uncomfortable silence had settled upon the room until Mycroft broke it with a blunt demand. 

    “You cannot continue with your… masochistic ways.” 

  This time Sherlock could not contain his scoff. 

    “You think I like this pain?” he looked up at his brother. 

  Mycroft straightened his back under the glare. 

    “I think you live off it.” 

    “I live off… him,” said Sherlock, and instantly regretted it. “Not… this,” he added shortly, slightly pathetically. 

    “You live off Dr. Watson because you live off pain. As an addict would live off a drug. Brother dear, if you should not stop taking it will bring you to overdose. And we must avoid that, mustn’t we? You know what it would do to Mummy.” 

    “Does overdose really sound like such hardship? Leaving this fucking life, _Mycroft_?” Sherlock snarled, almost laughing humourlessly. 

    ‘This lifestyle of yours that you have developed in recent times, hardly counts as ‘life.’” Mycroft stated coldly. “However dire it may be, you must move on, get on with your life. People need Sherlock Holmes.” 

  Sherlock moved swiftly, pinning Mycroft to the wall by his arm, not unlike how he did last time, as he growled into Mycroft’s ear. 

    “Don’t. Tell. Me. To move on, Mycroft. Or I swear I will break you.” 

    “You would not sink to such ignoble lows,” Mycroft said boldly, his face pushed into the wall painfully. 

  Sherlock pressed Mycroft’s arm against his back, harder, earning a cry of pain from his brother. 

    “Brother mine,” Sherlock imitated. “Don’t appal me when I’m high,” he said slowly, deliberately. 

    “You and I both know you haven’t yet failed to restrain yourself,” Mycroft whispered sharply. 

    “No… but I am ‘high on despair,’” said Sherlock, his voice both mocking and serious at the same time. “And this time he is not here to stop me.” 

_From breaking you_. _The way he broke me._  

  Mycroft stayed thoughtfully silent for a minute. 

    “Sherlock . . .” said Mycroft, his voice soft. 

  Sherlock didn’t reply. 

    “Sherlock,” Mycroft tried again. “Sherlock, I’m trying to help you.” 

  That was not what he’d expected. 

  Something inside Sherlock broke as he released his brother’s arm and pulled away, turning around towards the window so that Mycroft wouldn’t be able to see his face as his mind righted itself and his heart slowly collected its shards and attempted to put itself back together once again. 

    “Don’t make me live like this any longer,” Sherlock said, his voice breaking slightly in despair. “I can’t live like this.” 

   _I can’t live without him._  

  

  Mycroft wasn’t a hugger. 

  He knew Sherlock wasn’t either. 

  But his brother was in pain, and Mycroft knew that, and _hugging_  affected a particular comfort on those embraced by its strange nature. 

  And even though he couldn’t stand it, and even though he despised every aspect of the bizarre gesture, Mycroft found he was forcing himself forwards, a round measure of five and a half feet. 

  One step. 

  Two steps. 

  Three steps. 

  Mycroft found himself close enough to smell the scent of faint expensive hair products in his brother’s hair and the smell of the old dressing gown Sherlock still wore around his shoulders (an oddity for Sherlock; too short and wide for his tall, slim frame, and more worn and inexpensive than anything Sherlock would purchase himself or care to wear – deduction: John’s old dressing gown). 

  Taking a slight breath to ready himself, Mycroft raised his arms awkwardly, hesitating, before wrapping his arms around his little brother. 

  The effect was somewhat immediate, and Mycroft found himself surprised as Sherlock’s tense posture slackened under his arms, relaxing as he leaned into his body. 

  It was uncomfortable and unbearably graceless, but Mycroft endured it, regardless, if only for the sake of his younger brother. 

  

  Mycroft wasn’t a hugger. 

  That was a deduction even an idiot could infer without having need of guiding their mindless brains to the ridiculously obvious conclusion. 

  It felt wrong and more uncomfortable than comforting, but Sherlock accepted it, because he knew that it was the only sympathy he’d ever see from Mycroft ever again, and because he knew that right now he needed reassurance, even if that meant it was coming from Mycroft. 

   _How broken must I be to accept a hug from Mycroft?_  

  It was almost a laughable matter. 

  Almost. 

  

  

   _(Four days later)_  

  Sherlock found himself staring at the wall of his bedroom, just to the right of the window still dripping with the tears of nocturnal clouds. 

  He stared at the spot until his eyelids dropped over his eyes, his breathing evened out and his mind left the body still sitting on its bed, surrounded by small white notes. Exhausted and stressed from the vivid nostalgia of the past hour, his mind drifted away into the peaceful dreams of a world still filled with colour and light. 

  Everything in the room went quiet and still and even the window stopped crying in order to allow peace for the tired soul, finally sleeping soundly on the edge of his bed. 

  Then the peace was lightly disrupted as the sleeping figure shifted slightly in his dreams, and his arm fell gracefully down the side of the bed he lay upon. 

  A small white note, not unlike the ones that lay around him, drifted slowly from his hand and landed on the floor lightly. 

  Facing up into the room, small black print was written neatly on the paper, three simple, pleading words. 

     _I need you._  


	5. Chapter 5

  John was dead. He’d died two days ago. Mycroft had said something about a bullet this morning when he came through, though he was quite vague about it. He didn’t say much. Quite understandably he’d been in a hurry to see Sherlock after the yelling. 

  Mrs. Hudson had gotten the news as soon as it had happened, he didn’t even make it to the hospital, the poor thing. But that was all anyone had bothered to inform her of. 

  Sherlock wasn’t coping at all. He’d been quiet until earlier this morning when he’d ruined the flat; went about screaming and yelling at nothing. 

  He hadn’t spoken a word to Mrs. Hudson, not even to comfort her as she cried after hearing about John. Of course, it’s not as though she blamed him, being Sherlock and all, he wouldn’t be up for conversation or interaction for a very long time, if ever. 

  He might even attempt to move himself out soon, and Mrs. Hudson feared for the day. 

  Mycroft had even tried to come in and tell her that he was relocating him, himself, but Mrs. Hudson was having none of that. He had walked out with that aurora of importance of his, having not spoken much more than a vague specification on the matter of John’s death. 

  Only that morning, had he bothered to inform Mrs. Hudson of any of the details, turning the overly-polite pleasantries into a rather bizarre conversation about death. It had been hard to hear, but she hadn’t been so improper as to show that in front of her strangely polite, yet cold company. 

  She didn’t hate Mycroft for it. She knew that he had his own way of showing grief (more through the scrutiny of his brother, than actual sadness), and of course he was quite troubled by the death that had occurred. And, just like everyone else, Mycroft was mostly concerned for Sherlock’s wellbeing. Those who knew him before witnessing the milestone and miracle that was John Watson, feared for him the most. 

  A small part of Mrs. Hudson knew that it wouldn’t end well. 

  They were all quite familiar with the ease in which Sherlock could end his own life to stop his suffering. And despite Mycroft’s insistence on looking over Sherlock’s every move and breath, Mrs. Hudson felt no more at ease about the matter, herself. 

  Sherlock could very well decide at any point he deemed the entire situation unbearable, that the bullet that had killed John Watson, killed Sherlock Holmes too. 

  And it took every ounce of will in her body, to convince herself that that was not the truth; that Sherlock still lived and breathed and was still so very alive. 

  So, to try to make any sort of amends possible, she went up to Sherlock’s flat a few times a day to check in on him and attempt to make him eat. It was all she could do to ease the fear that this would all end, to forget the feeling that perhaps she’d really already lost two of her friends that night. 

 


	6. Chapter 6

  Sherlock woke the morning _after_  in a hospital bed, clean of the blood that had dried on his skin the night before. 

  He could vaguely remember a particularly significant event had occurred, but his tired and possibly-drugged mind, was irritatingly slow and useless. 

  That vague recollection, along with the gaping hole that had somehow inserted itself into his life, led to a very obvious deduction that for a moment Sherlock ignored, in favour of scanning and observing the room he lay in. 

  It was relatively empty and held not much more than a bed and a table with a vase of pink, white and green carnations. The top half of the wall was plain, while the bottom half showed wallpaper that consisted of violets painted over a cream backdrop. 

  The light of the sun shone in through the single window in the room, making the room seem unbearably _happy_. 

  It seemed to contrast so completely with how Sherlock felt that he had to close his eyes in order to stop seeing it, to stop being reminded of how divergent his pain was in this small world of happiness and light. 

  But the moment he closed his eyes, the vivid images flashed through his mind, and suddenly Sherlock _remembered_. 

  It felt as though a stake had been stabbed through him and shattered the heart resting delicately in his chest, exhausted from the pain his mind had finally allowed him to remember again. 

  John was dead. 

  John was _dead_. 

  It felt surreal, like the world he’d just awoken to was merely a figment of his imagination. The mere possibility of a life without John Watson so overwhelming that it hurt. 

  So he stopped. He forced the words out of his mind, built the walls around his mind palace; barring off the invading memories and emotions. 

  His eyes closed, and with his breathing as evened out as much as possible, he attempted to force himself to sleep, if only to leave behind the world he now no longer wanted to live in and forget for a moment; to delay facing the burning reality that he’d soon have to confront alone: a world without his best friend. 

  

  

  Sherlock snuck out of the hospital a few hours after, having just woken up and deduced that the nurses would eventually check in on him and have Mycroft called over on finding him awake and stable. The last thing he needed right now was for Mycroft to come with his stupid lecture on sentiment and how it would only let him down if he held onto it. 

  He didn’t have the courage to face that; to see how much he’d let everyone down. Mycroft didn’t need to remind him how much he’d failed, he never understood the concept that it never _helped_. It wasn’t going to change the fact that Sherlock cared and always would. 

  Sherlock was now a hopeless case. The only person who could save him was now lying in a mortuary, dead. Dead. _Dead_. 

  He stumbled out of the taxi and into the foyer of 221B, alerting Mrs. Hudson, who opened the door quickly and came to the aid of the drugged figure making his way up the stairs of his own flat and into the comfort of solitude and confinement. 

  He didn’t say a word and was thankful that Mrs. Hudson had the decency to follow suit as they made their way slowly up the stairs. When he was at the top, he pushed his landlady off of him lightly to signal that he was quite capable from there-on, and then walked slowly into his bedroom, wordless and silent, shutting the door behind him and leaving her there, staring worryingly back at the door he’d shut in order to close himself off from the rest of the world. 

  

  Sherlock didn’t do anything but stare at the wall blankly and despondently, or close his eyes when they stung too much from the cold air he didn’t bother to escape, or wander his small room vaguely and pointlessly in a half-attempt at feeling something more. 

  At one point he’d walked to the drawer and opened the draw of socks and reached behind to feel for the needle resting behind it, hidden away from prying eyes and hands that would have once been there to search for it. 

  He pulled the needle out slowly and sat back on his heels. He stared blankly at the object in his hand, feeling it numbly, his mind thinking indistinctly; considering giving in to the urge that vaguely took hold of him. He closed his eyes around the pain that slowly began to consume him from the possibility of the need to do this again. 

  And then that figure was next to him and whispering to him softly, telling him that he didn’t have to do this and that he could fight it; that he could face the world without this influence, and that it would be okay soon. So he dropped the needle and heard it clink softly on the wooden floor before he let his head fall against the top of the drawer and breathed heavily to calm himself as best he could. 

  

  Sherlock hadn’t eaten since before the death that had ripped his world apart. 

  It had been thirty five hours. Thirty five hours since the Sun stopped breathing and Sherlock had _watched_  as blood had pooled on his chest, helpless to fix the life source that was slowly leaking out of him, staining the soft shirt in a red that would haunt him for the rest of his life. However long that really meant being haunted. 

  Now, he lay silently and stared at the room, letting the darkness surrounding him, consume him within its black cloak, covering him and hiding him away from the prying eyes of any outsider watching him burn all alone from a distance he’d created, helpless of any way to pull him out of the fire to save him. 

  He was living in a world of coldness but he was still burning brighter and hotter than he’d ever burned before. And from in amongst the flames that enclosed his empty corpse, he felt nothing but the sheer agony that had taken hold of him. So he let it fall away until his mind felt blissfully empty and the numbness had fully taken over and he’d been left, as still as the dead, on the mattress that once almost felt like home as his body froze and the fire scorched him. 

  And he felt absolutely nothing at all. 

  

  

  A gust of cold wind blew in from the darkness of the cold air marking the fifth night London slept since the death of the detective’s closest friend. It passed through his window and then briefly over his peacefully sleeping form and rustled the papers he’d spent all night lying carefully out around him. The soft sounds of paper against paper echoed quietly through the room, barely audible above the whisper of the wind, before another sudden rush of air pushed its way into the room and sent the little confessions up into the air and falling to the ground like snowfall. 

  And in amongst the papers now littered across the floor, one lay there, its contents face down into the floor, still hidden away from the light. His first thought, the one that had been ringing through his mind since the moment he’d watched the light leave his best friend’s eyes; begging for it to all be a lie. 

   _Don’t be dead._  

 


	7. Chapter 7

  On the sixth day of the week following John’s death, Sherlock had been laying on the sofa, exploring a memory of a case with John, when his eyes fluttered open at the adrenaline coursing through his veins and his heart rate that beat faster than necessary for immobilisation. 

  For a fleeting moment, he forgot what had happened six days before, and he called out for John, only to hear the silence and to feel the strange coldness that had descended upon the flat in his prolonged absence. 

  He called out again, and on noticing the continued lack of reply, he got up in confusion and slight annoyance, before walking around the flat, lost and confused. 

  Mrs. Hudson came quickly up the stairs and Sherlock looked at her for a moment, his mind distracted with perplexity before he quickly deduced the situation. 

  She was worn and tired, and lines of worry were etched across her aging face. And her eyes were so… _distraught_ and _concerned_. 

  Then he felt his stomach sink and a cold sense of dread settled under his skin as Sherlock glanced around the flat and observed the mess of abandoned cleaning duties, and all the evidence that someone was now… gone. For good. 

  Then he looked at her with wide eyes that he was sure betrayed _so much_  emotion stirring within him, and she probably thought that she understood, that she –or anyone else- could come _close_  to understanding this. But she would never understand that no matter how much sadness and despair his eyes gave away, they would never be able to accurately convey just how _lost_  he _truly was_ , and that no one else in the world could have ever possibly felt this _alone_. 

  Without looking back at her, he turned swiftly away and practically glided into his bedroom. As soon as he was through the doorframe he shut the door behind him and rested his back against it. Without warning, his knees gave way and he slid down the wood to the floor, pulling his legs up to his chest with his arms over his knees and his face buried into them, hiding it from the world. 

  And there he wept. 

  Silently and softly, he cried for hours and hours; until the sky turned black and all the stars shone brightly and prettily in its darkness, betraying the depression trapped within the walls of 221B. 

  A long time ago, in a London where John Watson still walked and lived, Sherlock had looked up at the stars and admired them, with John still walking faithfully by his side, smiling at him and laughing at him for his ignorance of the universe outside of the Earth. 

  But now Sherlock didn’t even care that the rest of the universe existed, because it existed without John Watson, and therefore it didn’t matter. 

  However large or small; infinite or finite; beautiful or terrifying the rest of space was, it was nothing compared to the horror of what now lay, trapped, behind the front door of 221B Bakers St, crying within the cold and the fire, crying because of what had been taken away from him. 

  Crying, because there was nothing else to do. 

  The universe meant nothing without John Watson. 

  

  

  By 11 o’clock, Sherlock finally looked up from where he sat against the door. His eyes were swollen and stinging with the heat of his tears, and his arms were cold and stiff and had turned blue in their lack of use. His body was shaking from the cold and his hair was dishevelled in his lack of care for it, and his cheeks were flushed and burning uncomfortably. 

  He couldn’t recall ever looking worse in his life. 

  Standing up suddenly and as gracefully as he could, he walked over to his chair and pulled on one of John’s old dressing gowns before moving towards his window. 

  He pressed his cold hand against the freezing glass and held it there for a moment, almost relishing in the painful bite of the additional coldness. 

  When the cold had turned to a painful heat, he pulled his hand away suddenly and dropped it to his side for a moment, before raising it again and unlocking the window with a _click_  and opening it roughly, a rush of cold air blowing in at the granted entrance, blowing over his burning face. 

  Staring out at the lights dotted out along the streets, in the occasional nocturnal house, street lamps or workplaces; glancing up at the stars above him, dotted around scarcely in the sky, hidden under the cover of unnatural light; feeling the cold wind soothe his burning face, his mind wandered back to what had happened six days before. 

_There are so many things I need to say to you. So many things you need to know._  

  And with one final inhale of the cool London air, he turned away into his room, an idea forming in his mind. 

  

  Once he’d found a pen and several sheets of paper, each cut into small, white squares, he settled on his bed and sighed. 

  Picking up one of the white squares with his left hand, and the pen in his right, he sighed slowly before glancing up into the starry night to think. 

  

   _I am the man you have saved, so many times, and in so many ways. It is not my place to ask you of this, nor do I in any way deserve it, but please, just one more time: save me._  


	8. Chapter 8

  Sherlock woke up early that morning surrounded by white notes lying next to him on the bed and scattered out onto the floor where they’d been pushed off by the wind. 

  His face wasn’t flushed anymore and his arms were no longer freezing, but the ache was still heavy in his chest. 

  He stood up slowly and, careful not to stand on any of the paper now on the floor, he stepped lightly and cautiously and walked over to his closet, opening the doors to reveal the black suit he had out, ready for today: the seventh day. 

  He raised his hand to feel the sleeve of the plain black suit jacket, its black material stiff beneath his touch. 

  Then, taking the hanger out of his closet and holding the suit up in front of him, he spoke into the lonely, empty room. 

    ‘Right then… into battle.’ 

  And he got dressed. 

  

  

  He spent the next few hours sitting on his chair in the living room, staring at John’s old red one remorsefully, bracing himself for the hours ahead. 

  Then at about eight o’clock in the morning, Mrs. Hudson walked up the stairs to 221B adorned in entirely black and knocked softly on the front door before opening it quietly, cautiously looking in and relaxing at the sight of Sherlock out of the sanctuary and loneliness of his bedroom, waiting for her arrival patiently and expectantly in his old seat. 

  She pursed her lips thoughtfully for a second before coughing slightly and telling him that the cab was waiting for them. Sherlock stood up gracefully and walked out, passing her on the way through the door without a word. 

  The taxi ride was filled with a long and mournful silence on both Sherlock’s and Mrs. Hudson’s behalves. 

  Sherlock wasn’t speaking, as per usual, and Mrs. Hudson couldn’t find the heart to torture him with a forced, one-sided conversation. So instead they sat in an uncomfortable silence and watched the world flit past them through the windows, the sun shining weakly through the layered clouds who, out of respect for the sadness, were doing their best efforts to keep the world as dark as possible on this mournful day. 

  

  

  When they finally arrived at the cemetery, Sherlock disappeared before Mrs. Hudson had even managed to exit the car. 

  She paid the cabbie and glanced around for Sherlock, calling out in a half-hearted attempted to call him back, but on seeing he was gone, she smiled sadly before leaving to walk down the path to where the grave was going to be, hoping that he was going to be at least almost okay, even on his own. 

  

  

  The funeral service took place slowly and Sherlock spent the entire time watching from afar, hidden behind a tree, listening carefully to every word the priest said and watching every facial expression and action of the crowd of listeners. 

  Not many people attended, but the small group had created a tight circle around the hole dug out for the burial, and Sherlock could only see through a gap between a small child and her mother. 

  After long minutes -seemingly drawn-out into hours- the priest had stopped speaking and the coffin began to be lowered carefully into the ground by the help of Mary, Lestrade and two other people Sherlock didn’t know the name of (and didn’t care to.) 

  A few of the people watching the ceremony started to sob, their shoulder shaking slightly as the coffin got lowered further and further into the ground, where it would stay, resting peacefully forever. 

  The absent blankness that had claimed him since the moment he’d slipped on his suit that morning seemed to wash out of him, and like an anaesthetic receding from a wounded body, the pain came back to him so suddenly and so painfully that he had to lean against the trunk of the tree and close his eyes in order to block out the pain. 

   _This was real_. 

   _It was happening_. 

   _He was gone._  

  Sherlock opened his eyes again, forcing down all the pain inside him and refocusing on the burial, watching as everyone gathered around the grave that was now John Watson’s forever, began to cry. 

  Sherlock ignored the pain in his chest and the stinging in his eyes as he stared determinedly at the crowd before him. 

  When the priest began offering kind condolences to the party, Sherlock continued to ignore the heaviness in his chest. 

  When Lestrade raised a hand to his face to wipe his cheek quickly, he continued to ignore the coldness that frosted his heart. 

  When Molly and Mrs. Hudson cried silently to themselves, he continued to ignore the jab of knives pressing sharply into his lungs. 

  When Mary covered her face with her hands and her shoulders started shaking ever-so-slightly, he ignored the sudden coldness of the wind as it caressed his wet cheeks, and refused to acknowledge the tears stringing his eyes and dripping down his face and mixing into the water droplets on the dew-tipped grass below him. 

  

  

  Mary stepped up to the head of the grave, next to the gravestone that had been placed a few hours before (Mycroft had made sure it was carved and ready by the day of the funeral) and gathered everyone’s attention before she began to speak. 

    ‘Here lies John Watson, my beloved husband, and friend to many and all that met him. 

  ‘John was always a great man. He fought bravely and selflessly as a soldier at war. He healed people; good people, that would have died without him by their side. 

  ‘Born as a naturally kind and loyal person, intelligent and quick-thinking, logical but emotional, he was always destined for the life of a soldier; someone who could do things that made a difference to the world, and that was what he thought gave him meaning. I think the hardest part of knowing John was bringing him back to reality, and that was something only the people closest to him could ever really do. 

  ‘I knew John from a unique aspect of life: his wife. I knew him well. I knew him well enough to know that he was definitely, truly a good person. But I’m not sure that in even a thousand years, I’d have ever met the man he truly was. That was something only one person ever got to see… 

  ‘But the man we both love is gone, and our chance to love and save him is over. And I’m sorry I never got the chance to know him the way you did.’ 

  

  Sherlock’s chest burned, and it ached so much he had to press his cold palm to it to soothe the heat and stop the pain as much as possible. 

  When he heard the sound of Mary’s speaking begin again, he glanced up to watch the figure continue her speech. 

    ‘I don’t think I ever really deserved him. 

  ‘And I think, deep down, I always knew that he wanted more than the boring life he got with me. 

  ‘But then I betrayed him. I let him down in ways I never thought I’d be forgiven for, but he kept coming back and forgiving and being the loyal and perfect person that he was, he never gave up on me, no matter what I did. And it was seeing this that I realised that I could never leave him, because I loved him far too much for that, and I could never have let him go.’ 

  Mary had bowed her head to stare into the grave at the coffin lying within it, and started crying softly before composing herself and talking again. 

    ‘I loved him. I loved him a lot and I never deserved him. But deep down I will always know I didn’t love him the most, and that my love meant little to that of other’s, and that that love was always requited.’ 

  Sherlock didn’t breathe, and Mary cast a glance to her right, towards him, so fast that he wasn’t sure if it had been real. 

  Then Mary looked up to John’s sister and spoke clearly. 

  ‘His family; Harry, I’m sure will miss him dearly, and I’m sorry for your loss.’ 

  The funeral was quiet after that. 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> "The man we both love."


	9. Chapter 9

  Over the next hour the crowd slowly began to part as people bid farewell and left to the sanctuary of their homes.

  Molly kept glancing around for Sherlock, wondering where he was and where he’d been throughout the service.

  She hadn’t seen him at all since a few days before the incident eight days ago.

  She hadn’t really expected to, but she still hadn’t been able to help worrying about him and how he was faring with John gone, now.

  She’d approached Mrs. Hudson and questioned her about his situation, but she hadn’t been able to tell of much besides the silence and the violin-playing a few days before.

  Losing John was hard.

  He’d never been a particularly close friend of hers, and they were mostly just acquaintances through Sherlock, but it hadn’t stopped the sadness from clinging to her every day, since, and the worry that had slowly crept up more and more as each day past without a word from Sherlock, or any indication of his movements and continuation of life as before.

 

  Things had already been hard before the new issues of John and Sherlock had arisen.

  Tom had proven to be a complete liar about his entire life, turning out to have been an orphan and a drug smuggler within the countries of Europe all throughout his early life until he’d escaped to England where he found a family to adopt him.

  In the end, Molly decided that she’d forgive him for it, because she’d sort of understood the idea of wanting to keep that past a secret in order to try to forget and move on, and because it had never been his choice in the first place, anyway.

  So then on forgiveness, she’d told him that he wasn’t to keep any more secrets from her; that they’d have to trust each other fully from then-on.

  So when she found out he’d been having an affair with someone at work, she’d told him that their marriage was cancelled and he had to move out that day.

  Molly had felt alone ever since.

  And finding out that her friend had died made everything so much worse.

 

  Every day that came and past, seemed to get worse than the last.

  Increasingly concerned about Sherlock, and more and more upset as the reality of John’s death began to settle, it got progressively harder to go about her daily, lonely life.

  Every time anything seemed to move out of the corner of her eye, or she heard something creak, she’d jump in surprise and turn to inspect, half-expecting Sherlock to be standing there, a tall, black, lonely figure, come to seek her support.

  She’d feel so much better if Sherlock would just come and visit.

  But she knew it made sense that he didn’t, because there really was nothing she, or anyone, could do to stop the pain now. She couldn’t even come close to imagining or understanding just how _much_ it would have hurt to lose someone like that.

  She had lost Tom, but it wasn’t remotely the same.

  Sherlock needed John.

  He really, really did.

 

  It was only an hour after the service had finished, and she was walking back to the gate of the graveyard, when she finally caught a glance of Sherlock (or what she assumed had been him).

  She only glimpsed a small movement of shadow out of the corner of her eye, but she knew it was him anyway. So she turned her face briefly to the shadow, offered the most comforting smile she could, and turned back and continued walking back to the gate, a strange feeling in the pit of her stomach that this was the last time she was ever going to see him.

  She smiled sadly to herself as she hailed a cab and was driven home to her empty flat.

 

 

 

  Sherlock was still standing in the shadows of the tree from where he’d watched Molly flash a kind smile in his direction.

  Of course she knew. Of course.

 

  The sound of crunching leaves near him broke him out of his trance, and he turned around and came face to face with Lestrade.

  He didn’t speak, but soon found he didn’t have to.

    ‘I’m sorry…’ he said.

‘It wasn’t your fault,’ Sherlock replied, looking down at the grass in order to escape eye contact.

‘It wasn’t yours either,’ he said. Sherlock had to take a deep breath to steady himself.

  Lestrade paused for a moment to think, before breaking the silence again.

    ‘I know that you… loved him. And I know that you’ll miss him. But believe me, mate, we all did… and we all will. He was a good man.’

  Then he took a step forward and place his hand on his shoulder in attempt to console him.

    ‘I’m so sorry,’ he said, and then turned away and left.

 

 

  Everyone had left by noon. Everyone besides him and Mary.

  Mary stood at the gravestone, facing away from Sherlock and talking to the now-buried coffin softly enough that he couldn’t overhear.

  When she seemed to be finished, she turned around and walked back along the path to the exit of the graveyard before reaching Sherlock’s tree and walking towards him instead.

  She walked up to him just enough that they could both see each other, but Sherlock didn’t bother to turn around to face her.

    ‘He was a good man,’ she said to him, her voice perfectly even.

    ‘Better than you’ll ever be,’ Sherlock replied, still not bothering to turn around from where he stood with his back against the tree.

  A moment of silence passed before she continued speaking.

    ‘I’m sorry, Sherlock,’ she said. ‘I’m sorry that John got caught up in all of it, he was never meant to come to harm.’

  For a few seconds Sherlock didn’t say anything, but Mary waited patiently, so he said instead.

    ‘You’re going to get caught.’

  He could practically feel Mary smiling sadly from behind him as she said again, ‘I’m sorry.’

    ‘Goodbye, Sherlock,’ said she as she turned away and walked back down the path and out of the cemetery.

  Once he saw her walk through the gate, he leaned his head back against the tree trunk and let out a sigh, once again all alone, waiting patiently for time to move past him and the sun to once again hide behind the horizon for the day.


	10. Chapter 10

  Seven hours had passed since Mary had finally left, and Sherlock still stood by his place in the shadows of the tree, standing just out of the rays of soft orange light emanating from the sun that had only recently begun to set.

  Five minutes ago someone had come to close the gates in order to stop anyone entering the graveyards after dark, and Sherlock had waited patiently for them to finish and leave before he finally stepped foot from out of his hiding spot and walked over to the shiny, black gravestone adorned with the beautiful, dreaded words of, _John H. Watson_.

  Out of the corner of his eye he could see a short man with grey hair watching him with his arms folded over his chest and a sad smile on his face.

  Sherlock coughed purposefully before he started speaking slowly.

‘I miss you,’ he said, his voice cracking slightly. ‘And I’m so sorry that this all happened.

‘You once did this for me. You stood by my grave and spoke, and you told me… that I was a good man… but I… I don’t know how to do this, and I’m sorry.

‘There are so many things I wish I could tell you, that I wish I’d said so long ago and that I can no longer say and have it mean anything, but I want to… I wish you could know. I wish you could hear me, and I…

‘I miss you, and there is nothing I can do. I don’t know what to do without you-

‘I’m sorry I couldn’t save you. That I… I couldn’t get there in time to stop it all. I’m sorry that I’ve failed you. I…

‘I know it should have been me. _I_ should have been hit with that bullet. _I_ should be dead right now, not you. _I should be dead._

‘You were the best man… I have _ever_ known, and you’re more needed than I could ever be. The world needs you. _I_ need you.

  ‘It should have been me. It should never have been you, and I’m so sorry that I failed you by not stopping it.’

  Then the man standing to his right –John- took a step towards him and said, ‘It’s not your fault.’

  Sherlock finally gave into the urge to turn and look at him. But the moment he turned his face he was gone again. So instead, he whispered to the spot he’d had been standing in a moment before.

    ‘Yes, it is.’

 

  Then, walking over to the head of the grave, he placed his hand on the gravestone, letting out a breath to steady himself and he said, ‘I was so alone, and I owe you so much.’

  Then he lowered himself to the ground and slid up against the stone, his back pressed against it, his knees brought halfway up to his chest with his elbows rested on them and his face pressed into his palms.

  And like that, he started to cry.

  And through the tears running down his face, wetting his eyes, his cheeks and his hands, he spoke again.

‘There’s just one more thing you could do for me:

‘Don’t be dead. Please. Just one more miracle. Just stop it; _stop this_ ,’ he begged desperately.

‘ _Come back to me_.’

 

  Then the sun fell completely behind the horizon and the orange light disappeared and left the world in shadow, and Sleep, the cousin to Death, claimed the broken shell of Sherlock Holmes, to relieve him of consciousness for the few hours that remained in which he still could.


	11. Chapter 11

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warning! Mentions of suicide, implied suicide and depression

  He awoke at four o’clock the next morning in his bedroom, clean and dressed in different clothes, and feeling barely alive.

  His brain felt slow and his arms and legs felt heavy to move. It felt as though a great weight had been placed on his chest, and his lungs and throat hurt as though knives were being pressed into them from the inside out.

  But mostly, he felt tired. Because there was no point in continuing on anymore. The world had lost its meaning over a week ago, and now he just felt exhausted with the need for it to be over.

 

  _Mycroft_ , he thought bitterly as he stared blankly at the white t-shirt hanging from his chest and then at the bed on which he had been moved to while he’d been asleep.

  Mustering up the little energy he had in him, he pushed the white cover off of himself and swung his legs over the bed, then stood up to dress slowly in his normal outfit: the white shirt, black jacket and black pants.

  When he’d finished, he faced the door of his bedroom and exhaled slowly before walking quietly out of the door and into the living room, completely ignoring the presence of the kitchen to his left, and the silent demand it seemed to call to tell him to eat.

  Standing at the edge of the living room, he stared out the window at the dark morning sky and let his eyes wander back into the room that Mycroft’s men had cleaned up since his outburst a week before.

  He laughed bitterly to himself. There was no point in cleaning it up, it didn’t make any difference to him anymore.

  Absolutely nothing seemed to matter to him anymore.

  _I’ve had enough._

_I just want this to be over._

  And spontaneously, the little energy he had left in him seemed to wash away, and he had to fall back against the wall in order to keep upright.

  He leaned the back of his head against the corner of the doorframe and closed his eyes as his body started shaking with the force to keep his tears from escaping his closed eyelids and dripping down his face for the third time in the last twenty-four hours.

  _I’ve had enough_.

 

  Sherlock stumbled down the stairs, his hands in his coat pockets, clutching onto the things he’d put inside them.

  Reaching for the door handle, he opened the front door and walked out unsteadily.

    ‘Sherlock?’ he heard a tired voice say from behind him. ‘Are you going out?’

  He turned around to face Mrs. Hudson. ‘I think I remember the way, it’s through there, isn’t it?’ he said breathlessly, pointing vaguely towards the door.

    ‘But you’re in no state, look at you!’ she cried.

  Sherlock sighed. _I know_.

    ‘Yeah, well, I’ve got a friend with me, so...’

    ‘What friend?’

  Sherlock turned back to the pavement, John’s face stared at him, frowning in despair, his head shaking slightly; _don’t_.

    ‘Goodbye, Mrs. Hudson,’ he said almost softly, and he walked out, closing the door to his home behind him for the very last time.

  He barely registered the cold as it hit his face and body suddenly, reaching even the skin clothed under layers of protection and armour and making him shiver involuntarily, and he wrapped his arms around his coat, hugging it tighter to his body. His eyes scanned the street before landing on a camera watching him steadily. Mycroft.

  Sherlock glared at it for a second, anger boiling inside him at the thought of his older brother sitting in an office feeling important and superior, looking down on his brother both literally and metaphorically, disapproving of his every heedless, sentimental action and decision.

  Sherlock turned away from the camera to glance down the street to where he was heading, ignoring his friend standing on the pavement to his left, still frowning and shaking his head; silently begging him not to do it.

  With one last glance back at the camera he sent his last message to his brother via death-stare, threatening all he would do if he didn’t obey.

  _I swear to god if you follow me, I will fucking kill you_.

  Then Sherlock was gone.

 

    ‘Sherlock,’ he voiced desperately.

    ‘Sherlock.’

    ‘Don’t do this, please,’ he begged.

    ‘ _Sherlock_.’

    ‘Go back. Keep going. It doesn’t have to end like this.’

    ‘Sherlock, _please_.’

    ‘ _Shut up_ ,’ he snapped.

  His thoughts went silent and he thought for a moment that he’d won, but then John spoke again.

    ‘Sherlock,’ John said, his voice tired and desperate. ‘Why would you do this?’

  Sherlock stopped abruptly, turning in the direction of the voice, looking around desperately for a face to look at. To see one more time. But instead he was met with an empty street adorned in early morning moonlight and white glow reaching out of the street lights, painted onto the old, London buildings and the white and black pavements around them.

  And from within the shadows of a tall, secluded, rundown building, Sherlock shook his head slightly and whispered, ‘Human error.’

 

  He glanced down the hallway once to scan the room. It was long and dark and the walls were old and worn and looked as though in danger of crumbling at the touch. There were rows of at least a dozen doors on either side of the hall and each lead to an equally cold, dark and empty room.

  The air was damp and steam puffed in front of his eyes with every exhale as he walked slowly, deliberately down the hallway, his eyes down cast but flicking upwards to examine each of the rooms as he passed by their entrances.

  When he landed at the end of the hall, standing by the doorframe furthest from the front door, he looked back at the room and let out a quick, quiet sigh before deciding on the room nearest to him. He walked in gracefully, stopping at the centre and glancing around, his tired mind still somehow deducing its past and likely future, though much too fast for his conscious mind to keep up with, to comprehend.

  Then John was standing next to him and frowning again.

  He looked up at him and sighed in tired exasperation.

    ‘I’ve had enough.’

    ‘You can’t do this, Sherlock. Why would you do this?’

    ‘Joh… I… I can’t keep going anymore.’

    ‘You have to,’ John said desperately.

  Irritation rushed through him as he looked up into his friend’s eyes, and for once he didn’t disappear.

    ‘Look, I lost everything the day you died. And ever since that day, every new one that comes and passes take another piece of me with it. I _am_ breaking and my mind is fading. I always assumed that love was a dangerous disadvantage, that sentiment was a defect; a default that only stopped the mind from working. But that is not true, because it was _love_ that turned me into a better person. _Your love_. And I know that now… I finally know that.’

  John looked broken as he shook his head and whispered, ‘You need to keep going without me.’

    ‘Who would I be without you?’

    ‘Sherlock Holmes,’ he said instantly, certainly.

  Sherlock shook his head slowly, ‘no.’

    ‘Sherlock… you don’t need me here, to keep living.’

    ‘No… but I need _you_ to keep living.’

    ‘You never needed me.’

    ‘I always did. And I _still do_ ,’ he choked.

  John looked crestfallen.

  Then Sherlock spoke softly, his voice breaking, ‘You underestimate the value of your importance to me.’

  There was silence for a moment and Sherlock almost thought that he’d left. But then John’s voice broke through the silence once more as he said, ‘You underestimate your ability to live without me.’

  Sherlock looked down at the floor beneath his feet.

    ‘I really don’t.’

 

  He was still looking down at the cold, concrete floor when he sighed and drew his right hand from his pocket, several objects held within his clutch, before shrugging his coat off of his back and letting it fall to the floor, his thinly clothed body exposed and vulnerable to the cold air and sadness. Then, bending down to sit in the middle of the room, he opened his hand and watched as everything within his grasp tumbled to the floor and panned out around his right leg.

  He put out his hand to finger the small pile of paper, toppling the small tower and spreading them out around him. Then he turned to his phone and let his hand drift over towards it, watching as his fingers closed around the cold metal before bringing it up onto his lap.

  He held his phone delicately between both hands then clicked the on button quickly, entering the worded password ( _JOHN locked_ ) and unlocking it before selecting the texting app and watching as it spread out across the screen.

  Selecting the second of the two names in the contact list, he opened the text and typed quickly, his fingers flying swiftly over the keys until stopping abruptly at the _send_ key.

  Mycroft Holmes

(sent: 4:56am) _Come within twenty minutes. No less. -SH_

  Then, returning to the contacts list, Sherlock read the name of the first number, his finger hovering slightly over it for a second before lowering onto the screen and calling up a new conversation space.

  He stopped for a second, thinking over what to say. Not a moment later his fingers once again flew across the bottom third of the screen until he landed at _send_ twice more.

  John Watson

(pending: 4:57am) _I love you. -SH_

(pending: 4:57am) _I’m sorry, but I’m done._

  He sat and waited for a moment, staring at the screen, watching to see if the messages would send, almost as if he was waiting to be proved wrong; that there still was some kind of communication with the dead. But then his waiting was over as his phone buzzed slightly in his hands and the top of the screen was covered with a notification.

  From Mycroft Holmes

(received: 4:57am) _Goodbye, brother mine._

  Sherlock smiled lightly, clicking on the notification and replying.

  Mycroft Holmes

(sent: 4:58am) _Thank you, Mycroft_

 John Watson

(sent: 4:58am) _Don’t worry. I’ll be with you, shortly_

  Sherlock lingered for barely a moment longer before opening the Google app and making his search.

  He selected the first result and lingered for a moment as he stared at the picture at the top of the page, his eyes burning slightly before he willed himself to continue. He scrolled down until he found the title he was looking for.

  _29_ _th_ _January | A Strange Meeting_

With the screen still lit up, he placed the phone back on the floor next to him then drifted his hand slowly over the bundle of items. His hand hovered slightly over a white envelope, lightly touching the paper with the tip of his fingers, before continuing on and stopping at the needle.

  He closed his hand around the needle and brought it to his lap, holding it lightly in his hands. Everything had been measured out properly. Everything was ready. He was ready.

  It was time.

  His hands started trembling and he closed his eyes as the reality of what he was about to do settled in and a wave of panic coursed through him. He concentrated on his breathing, tried to tell himself that everything was okay, that it would be over soon. When he opened his eyes tears burned down his cheeks slightly and he lifted a hand to brush them away.

  Then he lowered it down to his left arm and started work to unbutton the sleeve, rolling it halfway up his arm to expose the pale skin.

  With his hands shaking, he pressed the needle point lightly into the skin and took a deep breath to steady himself.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> John Watson:  
> (Sent) Oh and don't worry, I'm going to be with you again very soon


	12. Chapter 12

  He felt empty and absent, like he was floating in a vacuum. His left arm lay on the floor, flayed out above his head. His right arm lay over his stomach, his hand limp, the needle having clattered to the floor as it was released from his grasp. It rested by his side, empty and used.

  Minutes -or hours- passed. He tried to lift his arm; to move it down towards his body to clasp his hands together, but it wouldn’t move.

_It’s beginning,_ he thought softly.

  He closed his eyes against the gloomy room, his eyelids blocking the rafters and the ceiling above him from his view.

  Then suddenly a wave of pain coursed through him and he opened his eyes as he tried desperately to cry out, but his mouth wouldn’t open, and his throat wouldn’t form any sound.

  Knives swiped through him from the inside. His blood felt like it was on fire. His eyes blurred. His throat burned. Everything hurt. All he could feel was agony.

  And then it stopped, and as though he’d been hit on the head and concussed, unconsciousness took over and everything went black.

 

  Suddenly the world was full of colour, as though he’d been asleep and been violently woken. He found himself standing on a long road, bordered by large fields of neatly trimmed grass. He squinted as he gazed into the distance, peering out at the long black line stretched out almost into the horizon.

‘You will look after him for me, won’t you?’ the sound of his own voice snapped him out of his confusion.

‘Oh… don’t worry. I’ll keep him in trouble,’ Mary’s voice said from behind him.

‘That’s my girl.’

  Sherlock turned around to face the figures of his past as things played out exactly as they had that day.

‘Since this is likely to be the last conversation I’ll have with John Watson…’ his former-self said to Mycroft. John sighed painfully from a few feet away. ‘Would you mind if we took a moment?’

  Mycroft looked briefly surprised, then walked away with Mary and the security man to a respectful distance by the plane, too far to overhear.

_Of course he knew_ , Sherlock thought bitterly.

‘So here we are,’ John said clearly before glancing around the airfield and clearing his throat as he stepped closer.

‘William Sherlock Scott Holmes,’ Sherlock heard his own voice say aloud.

‘Sorry?’

‘That’s the whole of it - if you were looking for baby names.’

  John chuckled, ‘No, we’ve had a scan. We’re pretty sure it’s a girl.’

‘Oh. Okay.’

  The two looked around awkwardly at anything but than the other. Sherlock watched himself as he struggled for words, trying desperately to find the courage to say what he wanted to say.

   ‘Yeah. Actually, I can’t think of a single thing to say.’

  Sherlock’s past-self looked down. ‘No, neither can I,’ he lied.

  John stepped forward and spoke quietly, ‘The game is over.’

  Sherlock looked back up and met his eyes, and spoke firmly, ‘The game is never over, John… but there may be some new players now. That’s okay. The East Wind takes us all in the end.’

‘What’s that?’

‘It’s a story my brother told me when we were kids. The East Wind - this terrifying force that lays waste to all in its path. It seeks out the unworthy and plucks them from the Earth. That was generally me.’

‘Nice!’ John said jokingly.

‘He was a rubbish big brother.’

‘What about you, then? Where are you actually going now?’

‘Oh, some undercover work in Eastern Europe,’ he replied, his voice as bored as he could manage.

‘For how long?’ John asked.

‘Six months, my brother estimates. He’s never wrong.’

‘And then what?’ John asked, apparently unaware of the answer.

  Sherlock looked at him and then away, gazing off into the distance thoughtfully. He shrugged. ‘Who knows?’

  John nodded and looked away. The old Sherlock looked at him intently, meaningfully, until John looked back and his gaze fell to the tarmac.

  Sherlock felt his feet move forward of their own accord, moving silently towards their former-selves, his breath caught in this throat, his heart racing in his chest as he watched himself ready for what came next.

‘John, there’s something… I should say; I-I’ve _meant_ to say always and I never have. Since it’s unlikely we’ll ever meet again, I might as well say it now.’

  Sherlock’s eyes stung as tears filled them, threatening to spill down his face as he watched the pain on the face of the man he loved await the confession they both had known was coming.

  He turned to watch his own face, his expression filled with perturbation as his mouth formed the words he’d _always meant to say_. “I-”

‘Sherlock is actually a girl’s name.’

  John turned away to hide his face, cloaking his consternation with a near-silent giggle before he turned back and said, ‘It’s not.’

   ‘It was worth a try,’ he said, shrugging, hiding behind his “humoured” smile.

‘We’re not naming our daughter after you.’

‘I think it could work.’

_Sherlock Watson could work._

  They looked at each other for a moment as Sherlock smiled a slight, sad smile in attempt to convey the true meaning in his words. John looked at him in almost imperceptible awe. Sherlock lowered his gaze to break eye contact, then removed his right-hand glove and held out his hand.

‘To the very best of times, John.’

  John hesitated for a while as though in slight shock, then he finally took his hand and shook it.

  Sherlock watched their hands as they held onto each other for what they’d believed was to be the last time. He saw -and remembered- the unwillingness to let go in both their grasps. But then eventually the memory of him let go and turned away, ducking his head slightly as he walked to the plane.

  Sherlock **_screamed_** _._

  He ran to himself, reaching out to him and watching his hand slide through his body like he were transparent.

‘Tell him!’ he screamed at himself, the wind hitting his tear-streaked face as he tried desperately to do something; to change something.

‘Don’t leave, you idiot. _Tell him!_ Tell him while you still have the chance. That chance doesn’t last forever. It’s gone before you know it. Before. You. Know it.’ he screamed.

‘You lost your chance! He’s gone, and you’re never getting him back! Just say it while you can! Before it’s too late! Before he leaves you.’

  He fell to his knees as he watched his own figure walk swiftly up the stairs and into the plane.

  He put his palms to his head in panic, his breathing quick and loud, his heart beat loud in his ears as he looked around the blurry airfield frantically, as though desperately searching for an answer to what to do.

  Then the world slowed and he sat back on his heels in defeat as his chest heaved breathlessly; reclaiming the air he’d been deprived of. He let out a long breath and his body keeled over and he rested his head against the ground, sobbing quietly into the tarmac.

‘You idiot,’ he whispered through his tears.

 

  The world went black again and once more he lay unmoving in what felt like oblivion. After another unmeasured amount of time, soft light flitted against his closed eyelids, and he opened his eyes to find himself in his old flat.

  He looked around, scanning the room. It was a while ago -around 2012. John’s things were still scattered around the room. The air seemed lighter than it had since the fall at Saint Bart’s. Sherlock thought longingly of that time; how he wished he could have it all back.

  Footsteps sounded from the hallway. Two sets. One person short, one tall. The door opened and Sherlock’s much-younger self appeared through the doorway, turning gracefully to the coat hanger and hanging up his coat as John followed from behind him.

  They were both out of breath, their breathing slightly deeper than usual. They’d just been out for a case.

  Sherlock’s past-self looked sadly at John for a moment, as he pondered the possibility of an alternate timeline where things hadn’t turned out okay and they hadn’t been standing together in their flat. Home and safe.

  Sherlock remembered this day.

  Young Sherlock made his way across the room to his computer set up on the table. John followed and took his place at the other side, standing behind the chair in front of the window, and he gazed out the window for a few minutes in silence. The only sound that filled the room was the tap of the keys on the keyboard under Sherlock’s fingertips.

  Then John sighed and turned to face him, not noticing Sherlock’s halted fingers a few seconds before, prepared for the conversation he knew John was about to initiate.

   ‘What would you do if I died today?’ John asked, his voice almost quiet.

  Sherlock looked up from his computer in slight surprise before a flash of sadness crossed his face.

  Sherlock could remember that feeling, he could remember thinking of the bullet that had been fired a few hours before; how it had been a mere inch from making contact with his friend’s face; an inch from taking his life. He remembered thinking for a split second that he might have lost his best friend. He could remember the pain as the possibility had almost become a reality.

  The look passed as quickly as it had come, and Sherlock’s face looked almost neutral as he quietly spoke the truth, ‘I’d die tomorrow.’

  John stared at him for a moment.

   ‘If someone was able to kill you, I assume they’d have at least had decent enough skills to eventually catch me too. I’d deduce that by at least the next day they’d have been able to find me, if I did not find them first,’ Sherlock elaborated, thinking quickly to save himself from the embarrassment of exposure.

  John shook his head in disbelief - or slight humour, perhaps, and looked down, smiling sadly.

  Then he looked up, and his eyes were serious and sad at the same time, and his voice was sincere as he asked, ‘no, seriously. If I were to be killed right now, what would you do?’

  Sherlock’s dream-self managed a look, somehow simultaneously both unaffected and conflicted as he considered his answer.

  John began to shuffle awkwardly as he awaited his response. After a minute he seemed to resign and appeared to be about to say something to dismiss the conversation, when Sherlock finally spoke.

‘I’d kill your murderer,’ he said.

‘And then what?’ John almost whispered.

_I’d die_ , Sherlock thought, watching his and John’s face sadly.

‘I don’t know,’ he heard his own voice say.

_Liar_.

‘Oh.’

_I’d be dead within a second._

 

  The flat disappeared slowly, and Sherlock watched as it seemed to fall away into nothing, quickly replaced by another room that built up around him.

  He glanced around at the yellow walls, the lilac dresses, the tables draped in white and the fancy clothing. At one white dress.

  John sat in his place at the middle of the table, dressed up in uncharacteristically formal, black clothing, an identical suit worn by the man standing next to him reading from cue cards he didn’t need and hiding the dead look in his eyes as he smiled as brightly as he could to the room of people watching him fondly from afar.

  Sherlock watched himself re-say the words he’d first written months ago. His half-clueless declaration of love for the man he’d permanently lost to someone better. The one person he’d chosen instead of him.

  He watched as he jumped over the table quickly, half-excited by the distraction from the pain building in his chest offered by the latest mystery that had presented itself.

  Then he seemed to be having a fight with himself as Mycroft had flashed in front of his eyes.

‘ **No! No! _Not you!_ Not _you!_** ’ Then he focused back on reality and pointed across the room, narrowing in on his friend; his lifeline. ‘ _You,_ ’ he declared. ‘You, it’s always you. John Watson, you keep me right.’

  Then past-Sherlock froze mid-step as time stopped in his memory world, and the expressions on everyone’s faces at their response to what he’d declared was displayed on freeze like a 3D photo ready to be observed.

  But Sherlock couldn’t have cared if someone had been in the middle of screaming his darkest secret point-blank to the room, even if -quite frankly- he basically had already, himself.

  But none of that mattered because a new realisation had crashed into him and he was filled with an overwhelming pain all over and this understanding was the only thing that could have possibly occupied his mind now that he’d realised it:

_John Watson, you keep me right._

  But he didn’t mean just _thinking_. He didn’t simply serve as a conductor of his brilliance. That wasn’t what made John Watson so important. Or special. Or needed.

  He kept him sane.

  He left him living.

  But more importantly: he kept him _wanting_ to live.

_You keep me, me._

_John Watson, you keep me alive._

_I am not Sherlock Holmes._

_I have nothing without you._

_I am nothing without you._

_  
_


	13. Chapter 13

  The reception disappeared suddenly as if a light switch had been flicked and all the lights in the world had gone out. Everything around him was black again, but it didn’t feel like he was floating in nothing. He could almost feel a hard surface beneath his feet.

  Then he could hear voices and footsteps. And then suddenly his vision was filled with light once more and his eyes focused in on his surroundings.

  His stomach filled with dread. He knew this place. He knew what was to come.

  He looked up at the dark doorway he stood in and then out to his front. All he could see of the hallway in front of him was the light blue coloured wall, but he knew exactly where he was.

  He held his breath as two people walked past him quietly. He glanced around the corner quickly and then went back to his position.

  He considered staying where he was. He wasn’t quite sure what would happen if he did, if things would still play out without him there to re-watch it, and if he’d just have to wait for it all to end in the darkness of this door frame, safe from the horrors of what he and the John of the dream would be about to witness. Or if the dream-world would freeze until he went out to face it once again.

  He stayed where he was, backed up against the wall, his head hung back in despair, hidden away in the shadows, even though he knew it wouldn’t make a difference where he was standing, because in this world he was as invisible as he felt in the real one, and no one could see him regardless of where he chose to be.

  He closed his eyes and let his mind wander. He thought of all the things he could have seen instead. The happy moments of his life his subconsciousness could have shown him. All the things that had given his life meaning. Maybe then he could have died happy.

  But Life was always cruel to him. Why should Death be any different?

  He thought of all the happiness he could remember: John’s smile; Redbeard; The thrill of the chase; Mrs. Hudson; Molly; Lestrade.

  His list wasn’t a long one.

  Maybe there was a reason for that.

  He thought of all his happiness again: John; Redbeard; adventure; friends; his first case; the first time he’d fallen in love; John, as he’d killed the cabbie -the first time anyone had risked anything for him; the adrenaline of excitement as he’d walked back into London after two years; seeing John again for the first time.

  He shut his eyes even tighter against the dark and his mind conjured more memories: John moving in with him; John joining him for their first case; John calling him his best friend; John silently agreeing to die with him; John.

  John’s smile; John’s existence; John’s acceptance; John’s loyalty; John’s friendship; John’s love.

  John.

  John, with such a simple name to hide his complex character. John, the beautiful man who had been there for Sherlock; who’d chosen _Sherlock_ to spent his time with. John had chosen him. And it didn’t matter if he chose Mary later, because he’d chosen him. He’d thought Sherlock worth his time at all; the invaluable, limited time that he’d had, had been used to save Sherlock Holmes, and that in itself was the greatest honour he could have ever asked or hoped for.

 John had killed for him, John had died for him and John had saved him. He’d possessed more courage than Sherlock could ever have had.

  Sherlock opened his eyes to his nightmare. He owed John this courage.

  Then he stepped out of the shadows and back into the light of the hallway, only just noticing for the first time the ghost of a smile still hovering against his face.

 

  He walked slowly.

  Every step he took felt as though it took all of the little energy still left inside him.

  It felt like he was falling with every step. But every time he started falling, he moved his foot in front of the other and kept moving.

  And after a lifetime of walking to Hell, the hallway opened into another room that he was standing in, John crouched low with a gun in both his hands, hidden from sight and ready and pointing at the woman -Rose Marianna- standing across the room.

  Dream-Sherlock spoke clearly, slightly desperately, ‘Mary, whatever she’s got on you, let me help.’

   ‘Sherlock, if you say one more word I swear I will kill you.’

   ‘Mary, let me help. Don’t do this to John.’

 Mary faltered for a moment, before looking back up at him, ‘I’m doing this for John.’

   ‘Then let me _help you,’_ Sherlock said.

   ‘No, Sherlock.’

  There was dead silence for a moment before Mary spoke softly, ‘I’m sorry, Sherlock.’

  She raised her arm, and past-Sherlock froze in shock before a piercing scream, ‘Sherlock!’ echoed across the room and John was running out of his place and knocking him over, just as the sound of a gunshot rang through the building.

  Sherlock stared in horror, frozen to the spot and unable to move as a red stain formed on the blue shirt in front of him.

   ‘Sherlock,’ John whispered in disbelief, before his knees gave out underneath him.

  Suddenly unfrozen from his paralysis, Sherlock surged forward and caught the man in front of him, wrapping his arms around his waist and lowering him into his lap, pressing one hand to the wound in his chest.

  Sherlock watched himself cradle John to him, moving him slightly, gently, as if to ease the pain.

  Another gunshot rung through the building and then Mary was back in the room, watching her husband as he died within his best friend’s arms.

  Sherlock looked up at her desperately, his eyes filled with tears.

‘Help me,’ was all he said, his voice cracking in fear.

  Mary closed her eyes for a moment and shook her head.

  Sherlock looked away, back down at his friend, and he cupped his face with his free hand, ‘John, John, look at me. It’s going to be okay.’

  John smiled slightly, ‘is Rose Marianna dead?’

  Mary took a few steps closer and spoke from a few feet away. ‘Yes.’

  John looked up at his wife and smiled softly, ‘You’re safe now. Good.’

  Mary smiled back.

‘I’m sorry, John,’ she said.

  John nodded slightly in reply, then turned to face Sherlock and he smiled up at him as he started crying.

‘Hey,’ John said, raising his hand to his face.

  Sherlock swallowed back the lump forming in his throat.

  He pursed his lips anxiously and said, ‘The game is over.’

‘The game is never over,’ John said. He glanced down at his wound, ‘There may be some new players now… That’s okay.’

‘It’s not okay,’ Sherlock choked.

‘No…’ he said. ‘But it is what it is.’

  Sherlock bit back his sob.

‘I don’t want you to go,’ he said.

John looked into his eyes and held his gaze, then up at his wife, then away at the wall, ‘I love you,’ he croaked.

  Everyone was silent. Mary and Sherlock stared at John, who continued to look at the wall.

  Then he looked at Sherlock and smiled, and just as Sherlock was about to smile back in reassurance, the light left his eyes and instead he stared at him in shocked silence as his chest burned painfully and his stomach dropped in horror.

  He looked him up and down frantically as if searching for any sign of life, sliding his hand down his arm and blinking rapidly to clear his vision.

  He bent over him, shaking and rocking back and fourth as if to wake him, but his eyes weren’t closed, and the light didn’t return to them.

  Sherlock brought his head to his face and kissed his forehead softly, closing John’s eyes carefully with his fingers. Then he hugged his lifeless body to his chest, wrapping his arms around it to keep him as close as he could, sobbing silently in disbelief.

 

  Sherlock watched himself hold his friend from where he’d dropped to the floor in despair. Lestrade was the first of the police to walk in, an ambulance bed and Mycroft following after him.

  John was taken from dream-Sherlock’s arms gently but firmly, and Sherlock cried out in agony. A gut-wrenching, sickening, _piercing_ scream channelled directly from his broken heart. He **screamed** as they took him away, not remotely concerned by the present company, who turned towards him with looks of unease and uttermost sympathy, or the trainee paramedic with wide, teary eyes, who covered his mouth with his hands to stop from crying.

  The doctors wheeled him away quickly, stopping when they passed Mycroft, as Sherlock finally managed to voice the word, ‘ ** _NO!_** ’ They hesitated for a moment in order to listen for his orders, and then continued on their way out of the building when they received a sharp nod in response.

  Sherlock surged forward, but Lestrade caught his arm and held him back, keeping his friend close as he fell back to the ground, all his energy rushing from him like a tidal wave in retreat, which left him feeling delirious as his head spun and made the world seem so surreal. ‘ ** _NO. No…_** _oh god,_ ** _no_** _. Please, God,_ ** _no…_** _’_

  One doctor went to Sherlock, resting his hand on his shoulder in an attempt to comfort him. Sherlock didn’t resist, but Greg dismissed him anyway.

  Lestrade spoke in a low voice and Sherlock listened, not speaking a word in response. Then when Mycroft strode up to them and started telling him what would happen with Mary, Sherlock didn’t reply, so Lestrade stopped him and sent him away.

  He walked Sherlock out of the building slowly and current-Sherlock followed closely behind.

  Outside, Lestrade led him to the ambulance intended for John, and let him ride in the back with him to the hospital.

  Dream-Sherlock climbed into the back of the vehicle and the doctors closed the doors behind him. He watched the ambulance as it drove him away into the distance and the world faded away into blackness.


	14. Chapter 14

  Sherlock sighed into the darkness, raising his hands to his face to wipe away the tears on his cheeks.

  After a few minutes, a ground formed beneath his feet and Sherlock was standing back home in the living room of 221B Baker Street with John Watson standing in front of him, opaque and young as the day he met him.

  Sherlock glanced down at himself, eyeing the clean clothes he now wore.

  He looked up into the mirror and smiled faintly at his reflection, as young as the 30th January, 2010.

  He looked at John, who didn’t disappear. He took a quick breath.

‘See, this is the moment I should have told you,’ Sherlock said. ‘I shouldn’t have tried to be cautious. I should have just walked over and kissed you.’

  John smiled.

  Sherlock exhaled a sigh.

‘I tried to forget,’ he said.

  John’s smile vanished, ‘I know.’

   ‘I can’t delete you,’ Sherlock continued. ‘I’ve never been able to delete anything about you.

  ‘I wanted to erase the pain, but I couldn’t delete you from my mind. And even if I could, I’m not sure if I could ever really bring myself to. You are the majority of me, it would have destroyed me. I am nothing without my memories of you.’

  He took a step forward.

‘I don’t want to live without you. I  _can’t_ live without you.’

  He took another step forward until he was so close that they were almost touching.

  He raised his hand to his cheek and bent forwards so their foreheads pressed together.

‘I love you, John Watson,’ he whispered. Then he tilted his head and kissed him. ‘And I’ve been in love with you for as long as I can remember feeling alive.’

  He pulled back and gazed into his eyes, showing openly everything he’d spent the last seven years trying to repress.

  He smiled softly.

   ‘Goodbye, John.’

 

  Then Sherlock felt, and saw, and was nothing


	15. Epilogue

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I don't want to ruin the end by having my notes there, so I'm putting them here.  
> Thank you so much to everyone who has read this. Really. Thank you.  
> If you've been reading since the start of this year when I first began posting, and you're here now: thank you. I've had a lot of difficulty writing this, and it means the world to me that you'd stick with me even through that.  
> If you started reading after that: thank you, too. You've also made it all the way through, and that still means so much to me.  
> Just... thank you, to all of you. And I hope this chapter can make up for the immense wait.  
> Please leave comments and kudos at the end, I value them all.
> 
> Epilogue:

Lying around him, scattered out around his lifeless body, were his remaining confessions in neat, black handwriting:

_The world without you in it is so cold and hopeless and empty_

_I’m dying_

_Help me_

_I am nothing and no one without you_

_I need you_

_You, it’s always you_

_Don’t be dead. Please. Just for me. Don’t be dead_

_I’ve never needed anything more than you_

_I love you_

_I love you more than I have ever found a way to say to you_

_I’m so sorry_

His left hand was resting peacefully on his chest, clutching his phone to his heart like his last hope, as it shined a small light in the darkness around him, illuminating his corpse softly like a dying ember. The black words _“A Strange Meeting”_ were written boldly at the top of the screen for their last few seconds before the phone gave out and the light faded away, leaving the room in complete darkness.

‘You’re reading John’s blog, the story of how you met,’ Mary’s voice had once said, in a place far away, in a time long ago, when for the first time in weeks, there had been hope, and it rested in the man standing by him, watching him in awe and disbelief, as if Sherlock had been something worth being treasured…

In Sherlock’s right hand, he had clutched a piece of white, lined paper hidden away in a plain envelope, with the last words of the late Sherlock Holmes; the world’s only consulting detective:

 

 

Dear John,

I know that you can’t read this, and so there is no point in worrying over what you’d say or think or want, but I can’t help but think of how you’d be if you were able to read this, or were able to think about it, or about me.

You would undoubtedly be upset, disappointed maybe, perhaps angry. But beyond my assumptions and speculation, the ultimate truth is that I don’t know.

I don’t think you would consider yourself worth this, or worth the pain that I’m in right now. I could see that in your eyes the moment I saw you. You’re a soldier because you get off on the addiction and thrill of danger, and a doctor because you enjoy helping people, but it’s more than that. It’s always been more than that, hasn’t it?

You’ve always put yourself in dangerous situations, thrown yourself into the line of fire, and I believe you’d do so for anyone you thought innocent or worth it. Some might call that selflessness, and for once I find myself agreeing with them, of course. But there is more to your lifestyle than addiction, selflessness, adventure. That, I can see.

You don’t find yourself worthy. Not only would you willingly put yourself in danger for people, but you’d also offer up your life for them. And why is that? Because you never thought you were worth enough to anyone.

And that’s truly painful, John, because you’ve no _idea_ how wrong you always were. I can’t know how you thought of me, but I do know that at least to an extent you valued my company -something of which I am still in awe of- and enjoyed the rush of danger, the thrill of the chase, that seems to come with being around me. But whatever satisfaction you got out of my company, whatever reason it was that you stayed so consistently by my side for so many years, it was nothing by comparison to what you gave me.

The entirety of my existence has consisted of nothing but loneliness and pain. Everyone has always despised me, everyone saw what made me different as a bad thing. But you didn’t, and I don’t think you’d ever had quite grasped what that meant to me; how much _you_ meant to me. And still do.

And beyond that, you were more fascinating than any single being I’d ever encountered, because _how?_ How could someone so perfect and honest and selfless hate themselves so deeply? How could someone so wonderful ever choose to spend their time -their unbearably, horribly, painfully _limited_ time- with someone as arrogant, rude and obnoxious as me.

You were the greatest enigma, the greatest wonder, the greatest person I ever had the good fortune of knowing. Someone I could never understand, because at every turn you would change your stance. Sometimes I’d do something stupid and you would yell at me and remain angry for hours. Other times I felt I did the same thing and you would just smile like I was something special to you, despite my utter ignorance to the reality of living, and despite your gentle exasperation at that.

I would do anything to make you happy, John. I faked my death to keep you alive, I gave into heartbreak to keep you happy, I kept myself breathing to stop you from crying, I gave up relief to keep you from mourning. And I’d do it all again to keep you alive. All of it, every second.

And then everything I’d done was pointless, and everything was over and you were gone, and I’ve been dying slowly ever since. And believe me, I tried to move on from it. In my own way, I tried. But nothing could ever repair me after losing you. No one could have ever taken away that pain. I’m burning up and I’m falling, and I have been falling since the moment the light left your eyes, and I never stopped falling, never will stop falling, and this time there’s no one to catch me when I reach the ground. But the longer I fall, the harder I fall, so I choose to end it now.

So this is me reaching the ground. _This_ is my final destination. My heart has been burnt out and I have nothing left but the ashes left behind, and I’m done. I’m done with falling and I’m done with pain.

 

In case it wasn’t painfully obvious, I love you. I have always loved you, and I always will.

I’ve been in love with you since the moment I met you. The _moment_.

I know you’d think this is unreasonable or untrue, but I’ve always known, since I laid eyes on you, that that was the truth. The one, unchangeable, undeniable truth. I’d always be in love with you. I was always meant to be.

I’m infinitely sorry that it took me so long to say that. I’m so sorry that it had to be like this, and that I couldn’t save you. But I love you more than you could ever imagine. I love you more than anyone could love anyone. I love you more than words could convey.

You saved me and I loved you. You accepted me and I loved you. You wanted me and I loved you. You stayed with me -you _stayed, John-_ and I loved you. You were there for me and I loved you. You were everything and I loved you. You loved me and I loved you.

I am hopelessly, irrevocably in love with you.

And I don’t know why I bother rewriting it, because as I said, you cannot see it. But now that it is said, I cannot stop, because simply writing it, these simple words, they are not enough, they do not convey enough, and maybe if I keep saying it, they might, just possibly, come close to explaining the depth of my love for you.

I am so deeply and completely in love with you.

I love you I love you I love you I love you I love you I love you I love you and I never told you and I’m so sorry, John. I’m so sorry I’m so sorry I’m so sorry I ever hurt you. I’m sorry I was not enough for you. I’m sorry I couldn’t save you. I’m sorry it took all this time to tell you. I’m sorry for everything.

I never deserved you, and I never thanked you for letting me believe that I might come close to it. All these words I write that mean nothing now that you’re gone, I’ve been writing since I met you, since you died, since the beginning of time. And I’ve been trying to say it, but I didn’t know how, I couldn’t find the right words, the right time, the right courage, the right… anything. And I’m sorry it took so long that it became so late it was meaningless. So late it no longer mattered.

If there are other universes with us in them, I hope I got the chance to tell you, because I know that if we exist there, I love you there as well. I hope in those other places, those other versions of us are happy. I hope we could be together for all of time and human existence. I hope that somewhere, in some other universe, we are happy.

But thank you for being in this one with me, John. Thank you for keeping me alive after all this time. You are the world to me; you are everything.

Goodbye, John

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Some day the true story may be told


End file.
